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TO A DEAD WOMAN 


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/ 

LOVE LETTERS 
TO A DEAD WOMAN 

By 

H. D> HARBEN 



NEW YORK 
THOMAS SELTZER 
1924 




?A-3 
' Uo 

m v 


Copyright, 1924, by 

Thomas Seltzer, Inc. 


All Rights Reserved 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 




LOVE LETTERS 
TO A DEAD WOMAN 




I 


The Anchor Inn, 

Woodstone, 

Tuesday, ist January. 

D EAREST,— . . . I am writing by the fire 
in Mr. Thorndike’s parlour. It is a large 
room above the private bar; and when I told 
him I was staying for some days he placed it at 
my disposal at once. The voices of the villagers 
can be dimly heard through the floor—a low, 
muffled rumble, punctuated occasionally by the 
sound of laughter (how false it is that Britons 
take their pleasures sadly!). But the odour of 
beer, distinctly noticeable as I mounted the little 
winding wooden staircase, does not penetrate 
so far as here, and seems to have been absorbed 
in the darkness of the passage outside. The 
innkeeper’s daughter, who glories in the name 
of Flora, has just left me, after clearing my 
dinner away, and setting the lamp on the cor- 


Love Letters 


ner of the table behind my chair. It is a heavy 
marble lamp, with a brass plate fixed to the 
plinth announcing that it was presented to Mr. 
Thorndike by the members of the choir of St. 
Margaret’s Church, Eastbury, on the occasion 
of his marriage more than twenty years ago. 
The round globe of frosted glass diffuses a 
strong light which penetrates every corner of 
the room, making the stuffy tablecloth look 
cheerful, casting a dark shadow over the thread¬ 
bare carpet, and throwing high lights on the 
pair of plated candlesticks that stand sentinel 
over the stuffed owl upon the sideboard. 

Two of the walls are provided with large 
windows, hung with curtains only less stuffy 
than the tablecloth itself. The third wall is 
almost entirely covered by the semicircular mir¬ 
ror at the back of the sideboard. The fourth 
wall is in front of me as I write; upon it, over 
the fireplace, between the cupboard and the 
door, are two enlarged photographs of Mr. and 
Mrs. Thorndike as they were, or as they were 
supposed to be, in the first bloom of their youth. 
But really they would never have been quite so 
repellent as that. The process of enlargement, 




To a Dead Woman 


9 


with the necessary touching up, has succeeded 
in removing anything that was human in the 
expression of their faces ; and they stare at me 
blankly and hideously out of their frames of 
black and gold. I should never have guessed 
who they were had I not questioned Flora about 
them just now. 

“I think they’re fine, sir; so lifelike! They’ve 
been much admired.” And she regarded them, 
as she spoke, with evident pride. 

Below, upon the mantelpiece, are two charm¬ 
ing coloured china figures of a shepherd and 
shepherdess. They are quite small, and prob¬ 
ably of no value. But whether by contrast with 
the enormities that hang above them, or whether 
for the simple reason that they are small, 
they are a pleasure to the eye. There is a subtle 
connection between smallness and beauty that 
I have often noticed, and do not profess to un¬ 
derstand. It is not personal to me, for it is 
enshrined in language itself. We say, “What 
a pretty little thing! What a great ugly thing! ” 
as naturally as the Frenchman addresses his 
mistress as “Ma petite,” or as the Italian adds 
the termination “accio” to something he dislikes. 




10 


Love Letters 


In all countries the diminutive is used as a term 
of endearment, and its opposite as a method of 
abuse. Even the photographs of Mr. and Mrs. 
Thorndike may have been quite pleasing in 
their original size, before they were subjected 
to the vulgarity of megalomania. And it may 
be that one of the threads that has bound you 
to me through all these years was the fact that 
you were small. I have admired many women 
in my time, tall women, graceful women, 
queenly women of an almost Grecian beauty 
that is undeniably superior to yours. But when¬ 
ever I have thought of you through all the time 
of separation I have thought of your smallness, 
and loved you for it. 

I almost had a quarrel with Lockwood about 
that. Did I ever tell you? He was speaking 
of you in his superior, detached way. 

“Yes, she’s quite a pretty girl,” he said; “but 
a trifle too small.” 

I flared up at once. 

“That is part of her charm,” I replied. “You 
might as well criticise a violet. If you don’t 
appreciate violets, go into the garden and pick 
convolvuluses.” 




To a Dead Woman 


ii 


But I never really liked Lockwood. 

If you could read what I have written, even 
you would think me callous, though you know 
me so well. I was always an extremist, never 
able to control my emotions except by repressing 
them altogether. And now—if I am to write 
at all, if I am not to sob aloud and proclaim 
to the very walls the extremity of my grief— 
I must just write as if nothing had happened, 
as if the world of to-day were the same world 
as the world of yesterday, instead of being as 
different as hell from heaven. I can hardly 
believe that only twenty-four hours have passed 
since I received your telegram. You sent it off 
in the morning, I know; but it only reached me 
at six yesterday evening, because I was not in 
town during the day. Let me explain how it 
came about. 

There was not much work to do during Xmas 
week, and I took a long week-end at Sandwich 
playing golf. Returning to London yesterday 
morning I went straight to St. Pancras, where 
I met Doyle, who accompanied me down the 
line with the papers in a case I had to conduct 
in Hertfordshire. You remember Doyle, my 




12 


Love Letters 


clerk from the old days? He has hardly 
changed at all since he used to usher you in to 
me sometimes of a summer evening long ago. 
Still the same short stumpy figure, swaying 
from side to side as he walks, that reminded 
you always of a duck going down to the water. 
Still the glasses poised aggressively halfway 
down his nose, so that he can look over the top 
of them at any interrupter of his work. Still 
the amused twinkle of his little brown eyes, and 
the gradually expanding smile which convinced 
the most nervous intruder that his sternness is 
on the surface only, and that he is a bon gargon 
at heart. Only his short-clipped bristly mous¬ 
tache is grey now instead of brown, and the 
wrinkles round his eyes are no longer laughing 
visitors, but sojourn permanently around his 
mouth and eyes. 

I arranged with Doyle to meet me at St. Pan- 
eras at nine yesterday morning. Your wire 
must have reached my chambers just after he 
left; and there it lay until we returned to the 
Temple, tired and thirsty, about six o’clock in 
the evening, after a long case before the local 
bench. The telegram was lying with a heap of 




To a Dead Woman 


13 


letters on my table, and I opened it while Doyle 
was getting my tea. My mind was on other 
things then, and almost mechanically I read 
the words: 

“Please come at once.—O livia.” 

I read it again, still without grasping its 
meaning. Except for the little card you sent 
me just before Xmas, I had not heard from you 
for months. I stood wondering, my gaze fixed 
upon a pile of briefs on the corner of the table. 
The name on the topmost brief was, “Pollock v. 
Hartnell,” and a knotty point in that case flashed 
through my head; only to be replaced by a 
picture of you as you were when I saw you ofF 
at Victoria three years ago, after a matinee at 
the pantomime with your children. Again my 
mind wandered off, this time to the case I had 
just been doing, and in particular to one of the 
local justices who had a face like a white pig. 
Then suddenly the whole thing dawned upon 
me, and I realised now that something serious 
must have happened. 

When we parted, when the long comradeship 
came to an end which had shone like the sun of 
summer through every cranny of my life for 




H 


Love Letters 


years, leaving me only the dead leaves of mem¬ 
ory to colour the autumn of the after-days, 
you promised—I made you promise—to send 
for me if ever you felt the need. I told you, 
most beloved of all the world, that I was always 
yours, in life, in death, and in the life beyond j 
that I would come to you at any moment, from 
anywhere, if only you would call me to you. 
That was ten years ago; and you had never 
called, and I thought you had forgotten. At our 
few meetings since no heartfelt word has passed 
between us—a smile, a pressure of the hand, 
and, when you were gone, a great depression 
that settled like a weight upon my soul, till the 
long weeks erased the memory of such a fleeting 
joy. Ten years! And now at last the call had 
come. 

“Doyle,” I said, when he brought me my tea, 
“I have to go into the country on important 
business. You had better get Lockwood to take 
that case.” 

It gave me a curious ironic pleasure to send 
the brief to Lockwood, and to think that he 
would earn a few guineas by my absence with 
you. 




To a Dead Woman 


1 5 


“But you can’t do that, sir,” Doyle answered 
in his stubborn way. He becomes even more 
argumentative as the years go on. 

I was in no mood for argument, and brushed 
his protest aside. 

“Give it to Mr. Lockwood,” I repeated, “or 
to Mr. Henderson, or anybody. I’ve got to be 
in the train in an hour or two, and I shan’t be 
in town to-morrow.” 

Doyle saw it was no good raising any further 
objection, and simply asked me, with a touch of 
sarcasm in his voice, when I proposed to return. 

“I don’t know,” I replied. “ But expect me 
in chambers as usual on Thursday unless I wire 
to the contrary. And now bring me an ABC.” 

“ Very good, sir,” and he stumped out even 
more jerkily than usual. 

I found I had nearly two hours to catch the 
train at Victoria, which gave me time to run 
home and pick up my suit-case. As I passed 
his door on the way out, Doyle returned to the 
attack. 

“And if you don’t come on Thursday, sir, 
what about the consultation in that insurance 




16 


Love Letters 


case? And what about Williamson? And 

I cut him short effectively. 

“Look here, Doyle,” I said, “you’ve not 
been in this job thirty years for nothing. If 
I don’t come back to-morrow you will have to 
take the full responsibility and make the best 
arrangements you can. Say I am called away, 
say I am ill, say anything you like—I can trust 
you to do the best possible in the circumstances. 
Good-night.” 

“ Very good, sir. Good-night, sir.” There 
was no sarcasm left in his tone; he was all 
smiles. 

It was a cold and anxious journey. I could 
not read; partly because I was tired, but mainly 
because of my excitement and uncertainty. The 
train was late in starting, owing to the fog (if 
ever there is any fog in London, it is always 
worst at Victoria); and when it started it seemed 
to stop an unconscionable time at all the stations 
between Victoria and Sutton. Half-past ten 
had gone before I had descended from the 
train 5 and it was after eleven when your hus¬ 
band gave me the news that you were too ill to 




To A Dead Woman 


17 


see any one. I took a room at the Anchor; and 
now I am going to stay till the end. I can do 
no good, I know$ but I cannot leave you now, 
and all the pent-up love of the long, long years 
seems to be bursting its prison bars at last, to 
find fulfilment in death. 

You would smile your old smile, half mis¬ 
chievous, half maternal, if you saw me writing 
here. I have no books, and if I had I could not 
read. I know no one, and if I did I could not 
talk. And so, O best beloved of all the world, 
I am just going to write to you every day long 
letters from the past—dipping into the years 
that were ours, calling up the magic memories 
of days that only dawned for you and me, yield¬ 
ing the nakedness of my soul to you in the 
isolation of this little room, as lovers bare their 
bodies in the darkness, telling over again the 
tale that no one else will ever know, the tale 
that was written in the book of our twin souls, 
in youth, in London, long ago. 




II 


Wednesday morning . 

I FORGOT to say good-night to you yester¬ 
day. Perhaps you can guess why? Dar¬ 
ling, I could write no more—mist hid the paper 
from my eyes. You always laughed at me when 
I behaved like that at the theatre. Do you 
remember, when the curtain fell, the uncon¬ 
scionable time I used to spend pretending to 
find an imaginary hat beneath my seat, while 
I really mopped my eyes so that you should not 
be ashamed? You never quite understood my 
tears, which did not depend upon the sadness 
of the play. They came to me as a “shower, 
blown up by the tempest of the soul,” as if some 
spring of memory, touched, indeed, by the 
words or actions of the stage, let loose pent-up 
emotions that bear but a slight relation to the 
play itself, and vibrate to the infinite pathos of 
things. I have sat unmoved, while the au- 
18 


To A Dead Woman 


19 


dience sniffed and sniffled around me at the 
sadness of a well-told tale. I have wept, al¬ 
most to breaking point, while the theatre 
laughed lightly at a rapier thrust of Bernard 
Shaw, or gathered up its garments for departure 
as Walther placed the wreath of laurel newly 
won upon the head of old Hans Sachs, to the 
swinging music of Nuremberg’s approving 
crowd. And last night, at the close of my letter, 
the thought that veiled the paper with my tears, 
and compelled me to lay down my pen, was 
not so much that I should never see you again, 
as the knowledge that this little drama of ours 
is but a speck of sand in the great Sahara of 
human happenings—either utterly meaningless, 
or pregnant, perhaps, with the whole secret of 
the world. 

Whichever it be, I have promised to tell you 
the tale over again; and I am going to begin 
now, by the fire, after my morning walk. Soon 
after breakfast I went out into the frosty air, 
taking the footpath over the stile by the church, 
and returning to the main road beyond the 
blacksmith’s shop. The earth was hard and 
wrinkled, and the sky was clear; a few geese 




20 


Love Letters 


waddled away as I came near the stile ; two 
horses, shaggy in their winter coats, stopped 
grazing by the pond to watch me pass; a wisp 
of smoke shot up in a straight line into the sky 
from the cottage by the walnut tree 5 and as I 
looked eastward to the rising ground that hid 
your house from view I wondered of what 
nature is the chain that holds me near you after 
so long, whether it is really made of the links 
of association that we forged for ourselves, or 
whether it was wrought of subtler matter in 
some spiritual furnace, lives ago. 

So far as we are conscious of it, our friendship 
began that Friday evening in Soho fifteen years 
since, almost to a day. You were dining that 
evening with Lockwood and Enid Rowe, at a 
table in the farther room of the Restaurant des 
Gourmets in Lisle Street. I wandered in late, 
about eight o’clock. I had been in consultation 
in chambers from five till nearly seven; when 
that was over I had spent half an hour dictating 
to Doyle an opinion on another case. It was 
after 7.30 when I left chambers; the Temple 
was nearly deserted, and the grey buildings 
showed gaunt against the cold blue of the sky. 




To A Dead Woman 


21 


There was a tinge of frost in the air as I stepped 
briskly out into the Strand and threaded my 
way among the hurrying crowds that thronged 
the lighted pavements, all, like myself, on 
their way home after a tiring week of sedentary 
work. 

“ Half a bottle of Beaune won’t do me any 
harm to-night,” I thought as I dived into the 
darkness of Covent Garden and Long Acre, only 
to emerge again into the brilliance of Leicester 
Square. Turning up beside the Empire, I wan¬ 
dered into the Gourmets almost mechanically. 
Most of the tables in the first room were full ; 
and it was when I looked through the door into 
the room beyond that I saw your face for the 
first time. Set in the frame of the archway, the 
vividness of your expression caught my notice, 
and the brightness of your eyes. I stopped for 
a moment, looking through into the farther 
room to see if there were a table vacant there. 
And suddenly, as I approached, I noticed that 
sitting next you was Lockwood. Had he been 
alone, or with any one else, I should have 
given him a nod of recognition and passed on; 
but, as it was, I stopped to speak to him, even- 




22 


Love Letters 


tually asking permission to sit at the vacant 
place at his table—opposite you. 

“Do, old chap. Let me introduce you. Mr. 
Duchesne—Miss Rowe—Miss Marsden,” he 
added, presenting me first to Enid and then to 
you. 

I bowed, smiled, and sat down. The great 
adventure had begun; and we neither of us had 
the least idea that anything of importance had 
happened. 

“Where do you hail from now?” asked 
Lockwood. 

I explained that I had only just left chambers. 

“There, you see,” he said, “ Ronnie gets 
heaps of work, and I never seem to have any¬ 
thing coming in somehow. It’s as rare as any¬ 
thing that I leave after six; these brainy fellows 
have all the luck.” 

“I was thinking just the opposite,” I said. 
“Don’t you agree with me?” I added, appeal¬ 
ing to you. “While I was closeted with my 
beastly briefs, Lockwood, you were here,” and 
I waved my hand airily towards you and Enid 
—especially towards you—to point the contrast 
between his lot and mine. 




To A Dead Woman 


23 


“That’s all very well, old chap,” he said; 
“but you’re getting on, and I’m broke. Never 
mind,” he added, turning to Enid and you, 
“we’re all broke together anyway.” 

I don’t know what it is about Lockwood, but 
he always spoke as if he wished to make me 
feel out of it somehow. Beneath a veneer of 
geniality and good fellowship I sensed an un¬ 
dercurrent of jealousy and rancour. Yet, to 
do him justice, I think it was quite subconscious 
with him. And I may not have been entirely 
blameless; for I resented his fondness for you. 

You had nearly finished dinner when I or¬ 
dered mine; and before my soup was served, 
before my half bottle of Beaune was even 
opened, Lockwood was ready to go. He and 
Enid had seats for the theatre, which began at 
8.45. You were only dining with them, and 
intended going back early to your digs. Some¬ 
thing made me bold—perhaps it was the loneli¬ 
ness that overwhelms the worker in a capital 
city at the end of day, when he watches the 
night world starting on its round of pleasure in 
which he has no part; perhaps it was merely 
the brightness of your eyes. I had hardly ad- 




24 


Love Letters 


dressed a word to you directly when Lockwood 
rose to go. Then I threw out a suggestion to 
you, carelessly. 

“If you’re not going to the theatre with them, 
why not finish your cigarette and coffee in peace, 
and keep me company?” 

So you stayed, and watched me dine; and we 
talked together for the first time. Superficially 
we talked, and yet dived suddenly beneath the 
surface for a moment, only to come back hur¬ 
riedly and half-ashamed to badinage again. 
You were perfectly natural—it was that that 
struck me most. I, on the other hand, accus¬ 
tomed though I was to social intercourse and 
after-dinner small talk, became nervous and 
unlike myself. I wanted to impress you. I was 
talking for results instead of for conversation, 
and so I talked badly, until we found our first 
great link in common—music. You told me 
that was your profession. You spoke of the 
long years of study, of your first concert, of 
the ups and downs, the triumphs and disap¬ 
pointments of your new career. You spoke of 
the music the public wanted, of the music you 
loved to sing, of the jealousies and backbitings 




To A Dead Woman 


25 


of artists, and of the great happiness of work, 
living alone with Enid in the little studio near 
Victoria Station. So we forgot ourselves and 
talked until the noise of waiters piling chairs on 
tables at the other end of the room aroused us 
to the realisation that we were left alone. All 
the diners had gone; some of the lights were 
extinguished 5 only at the table by the window 
the manager and his wife, with one or two other 
helpers, were finishing their evening meal. 

I called for coffee and a liqueur. 

“Join me,” I said. “A creme de menthe?” 

You hesitated. 

“Yes, a creme de menthe, rien que pour la 
couleur. The green will look well against your 
hair.” 

“Tres dix-huitieme,” you answered. 

You yielded, and we delayed another twenty 
minutes, of course talking the while. Then at 
last we left. 

“Bon soir,” I said to the waiter who held 
the door open for us to pass through. 

“Bon soir, Monsieur et Madame,” he said, 
smiling, glad to see the last of us. 

We stood under the lamp outside the door 




2 6 


Love Letters 


at the corner of the dark street. It was quite 
late. ! ' 

“How do you get home?” I asked. 

“By. bus from Piccadilly Circus is the sim¬ 
plest way.” 

We wandered along Coventry Street, the 
busiest and most sordid thoroughfare in the 
West End at that time of night, until we stood 
in the group on the pavement of Piccadilly, 
opposite Swan & Edgar’s, waiting. 

“You needn’t bother to come,” you said. 
“I’m quite used to going alone. I do it every 
night.” 

I answered laughing, “I don’t do it every 
night 5 that’s why I want to come with you.” 

And before I left you at your door, you had 
asked me to tea with you and Enid on Sunday. 




Ill 


W ednesday afternoon, 4 f.m. 

D EAREST,— . . . I have been planning 
out my days (there are only three of 
them, and it sounds infantile, doesn’t it?), and 
have determined to walk after lunch, coming 
in to write to you at the hour loved by Homer, 
when the sun sets and the lamps are lit. The 
exercise will do me good, and be a welcome 
change from the routine of work in London - y 
and after I once settle down in this chair about 
four o’clock I shall be able to remain with you 
undisturbed for the rest of the day. 

I went out accordingly after lunch to-day, 
stopping for a moment to chat with old Thorn¬ 
dike across the counter in the bar. A heavy 
moustache half hides the fullness of his lips, 
and his rolled-up sleeves disclose a sleek fore¬ 
arm, podgy as a baby’s. The thickness of his 
ears and the dent of the belt around his waist 

27 


28 


Love Letters 


add a Gargantuan touch that often overtakes 
the publican in middle life, creating an im¬ 
pression sometimes of broad geniality, some¬ 
times of mere disgust. With Thorndike the 
former aspect is uppermost. He is really a 
horrid sight; but I can’t help liking his hearty 
voice and his expansive smile. 

“Looks as if it would snow, sir,” he said as 
I passed through. “I hope you’re comfortable 
upstairs, and Flora gives you all you want.” 

“Couldn’t be better, thank you,” I answered, 
“and Flora’s most attentive.” 

“Good girl, and a great help in this business. 
But ’er mother’s a bit soft with ’er, and if she’s 
learnt what’s what it’s all due to ’er father, 
tho’ I say it as shouldn’t. What I says is, 
‘Work in yer work hours an’ play in yer play 
time,’ that’s what I says. And yer ’umble ain’t 
no bad example neither.” 

His great arms ranged over the counter, 
sweeping up the mugs and glasses, and mopping 
up the spilt liquor with a cloth. 

I passed out and followed the same path 
as this morning. The same geese waddled by 
the stile; the same two horses grazed on the 




To A Dead Woman 


29 


common by the pond} but the walk wore a dif¬ 
ferent aspect, for the sky was heavy with snow- 
clouds and the bite had gone out of the air. 
The very smoke from the cottage by the stile 
hung indecisively round the chimneys, to be 
caught at length in the branches of the old wal¬ 
nut tree. And as I walked I wondered which 
of the many incidents of our friendship it were 
most worth while to tell in the few short days 
and nights I am spending with your memory. 
I will begin with that first Sunday with you— 
first of so many Sundays we passed together. 

I was always rather careful of my dress in 
those days} but I took more trouble than usual 
that Sunday to look my best. The impulse 
was subconscious, but the process it set in motion 
was very deliberate indeed. In fact I wasted 
so much time putting the finishing touches to 
my appearance that I did not arrive at your 
flat till after half-past four. 

You yourself opened the door to me, and 
when I entered I found that you were alone. 

“Are you in any hurry for tea?” you asked. 
“Enid’s gone to the Queen’s Hall. She’ll be 
back presently, and I thought we’d all have 




30 


Love Letters 


tea together then. Meanwhile we can sit over 
the fire.” 

“There’s nothing I enjoy more,” I answered, 
“than a talk au coin du feu” 

“Let’s turn out the light and just have the 
firelight, shall we?” you asked. 

“I’ll do it,” I said, as I turned the switch 
by the mantelpiece without rising from my 
chair. You were leaning back in yours with 
your feet stretched out on the fender and your 
arms curved upwards on to the back of the 
fauteuil above your head. 

I asked if you had been alone all the after¬ 
noon. 

“Yes. You see Enid had two complimen¬ 
tary tickets for the Queen’s Hall. She gets 
them quite frequently, and we usually go to¬ 
gether. But to-day, as I’d asked you to tea, 
I didn’t want to be out when you came. So 
she took Lockwood instead, and I stayed at 
home.” 

“What a pity! I wish I’d known. I could 
have come earlier. I was only reading by my 
fire myself.” 

“It would have been nice. But I’m used to 




To A Dead Woman 


3 i 


being alone $ I’ve been alone nearly always. 
Enid and I have only lived together a few 
months.” 

“And before that?” I questioned. 

“Oh, before that I had a room in a sort of 
hostel for music-students. I lived there two 
years. There was plenty of company if we 
wanted it, but I never did. I preferred my 
own, and used to hurry through meals to go 
up to my bedroom, turn on the gas fire, and 
bury myself.” 

“But did you never live at home?” 

“No. You see I never had a home—not 
exactly—not for years.” 

You paused, then made as if to continue, 
and hesitated again, looking into the fire. 
Your profile showed clear-cut and sensitive 
against the cushion in the flicker of the fire¬ 
light 5 your lips were parted sensuously; your 
hair was very dark and your eyes were very 
blue. I noticed your fingers, strong and sensi¬ 
tive. Something stirred in me, a great wave 
of friendliness, not untinged with desire. I 
longed to know all about you, to be closer to 
you. 




32 


Love Letters 


“Some day I’ll tell you/’ you continued. 

“Why not now?” 

You turned your face towards me. The 
broad forehead gave strength to your face and 
balanced the gentleness of your lips. 

“I know you so little,” you said. 

“I feel as if Pd known you quite a long time. 

“Yes j but the others may come in any min¬ 
ute, and it’s a long story. Besides, it wouldn’t 
really interest you.” 

“Everything you say interests me,” I an¬ 
swered truthfully. “I don’t know when Pve 
enjoyed a talk as much as ours on Friday 
night.” 

“So did I. It was jolly, wasn’t it?” 

“When can we have another?” I asked. 
“Will you dine with me one day?” 

“I’d love to.” 

“When?” 

“Whenever you like.” 

“What are you doing to-night?” 

“Nothing.” 

“Will you come to-night then?” 

“Yes.” 

It was all so simple. And yet we both knew 




To A Dead Woman 


33 


that something was happening $ and I changed 
the subject abruptly, almost guiltily. 

“Tell me how you got to know Lockwood,” 
I continued. “He seems very thick with your 
friend.” 

You laughed a little nervous laugh. 

“Do you know Lockwood well?” you asked. 

“He was at Oxford with me,” I replied, 
“and we are both at the Bar. His chambers 
are close to mine in King’s Bench Walk. We 
occasionally meet in the Common Room at 
lunch, or in the corridors at the Old Bailey— 
that’s all.” 

“Is he a friend of yours?” 

“No, not exactly.” 

“I thought he must be, by the way he called 
you ‘old chap’ the other night.” 

“Oh, he’d ‘old chap’ anybody,” I laughed. 
“Besides, we’ve known each other a long time.” 

“Anyway, you came to sit at his table.” 

“Opposite you,” I replied, smiling, and 
fancied I saw a little wave of light pass over 
your face. But your features did not change j 
it may have been only my fancy. 

“Do you like Lockwood?” you persisted. 




34 


Love Letters 


I answered evasively. As a matter of fact 
I never could stand the man. He always 
jarred on me; and, though I could not point to 
any word or action of his that justified my 
opinion, I always regarded him as a bounder. 
But I could not say all this to you, and so I 
replied that I knew very little about him. 

“I don’t like him at all,” you said frankly. 
“Enid does. In fact, she’s dotty about him.” 

“Perhaps you’re jealous,” I suggested, teas¬ 
ing. 

“Oh, not the least; quite the reverse. You 
see he knows a lot of musical people, and when 
he heard me sing he spoke so admiringly about 
it that I was grateful, and was quite taken in. 
He came round here, but I soon found it was 
not for my singing he came. He worried me; 
I didn’t like him that way at all; and—and— 
well, I always avoided him and turned him on 
to Enid when I could. Somehow she likes 
him. I’m sure he doesn’t care a rap for her or 
any one but himself; but I’m half afraid that 
he’ll play with her, for mere vanity. I think 
he’s a rotter anyway.” 




To A Dead Woman 


35 


You spoke hurriedly, and I knew you had 
left a good deal untold. 

Presently the others returned, and we had 
tea. Afterwards Lockwood asked you to sing, 
and Enid accompanied you in the prayer from 
Tosca, and two songs of Reynaldo Hahn. You 
had a glorious voice in those days, rich and 
musical and perfectly trained. I can honestly 
say that from that first time I heard you, down 
to the day when we parted, when you sang to 
me for the last time, I have never derived 
anything but the purest artistic satisfaction from 
listening to you. How near you came to being 
a great artist! Your voice was exquisite, your 
musical sense perfect; and, above all, you let 
the composer tell his own tale, understating 
his case rather than emphasising it, lest some 
exaggeration of your own should introduce an 
alien note into the atmosphere and bring his 
soaring genius down to earth. And yet your 
singing had personality too; only it was a very 
constant and trusting personality, so unobtru¬ 
sive that I only knew how definite it really was 
when I heard others sing music that you had 
sung. Then something always jarred, even 




36 


Love Letters 


though their virtuosity was greater than yours ; 
it was just the lack of that perfect harmony 
between the singer and the work which is the 
mark of the true artist, and which you pos¬ 
sessed in a remarkable degree. 

Before you sat down you sang an Ave Maria 
that I had never heard, and which I could not 
place. It was plaintive, like an old English 
folk-song j but the harmonies were modern and 
incomplete, like an unfinished picture. Yet 
the melody was clear and haunting, and later 
it became a favourite of mine. It was in man¬ 
uscript, and you told me it was written by a 
friend. 

“Ad-d musical fellow anyway,” I said, 

and asked you to sing it again. 

Enid played after that the two Arabesques 
of Debussy and the first movement of Chopin’s 
Sonata. She played too melodramatically, and 
seemed to delight in getting the last ounce out 
of cheap effects. To do her justice she suc¬ 
ceeded, for she had a wonderful technique j 
but she was not really an artist, her phrasing 
and her readings were commonplace. There 
was no restraint, no personality; it was all there 





To A Dead Woman 


37 


all the time, and one soon tired of it. I fancy 
she must have made love that way too—hence 
her tragedy. 

When Enid had finished playing you sang, 
first some Debussy, and then, because I asked 
you to, some Lieder of Schumann. I was 
frankly spellbound. Heine’s love had never 
seemed so real, and yet all the time you gave 
the idea that there was something wonderful 
that must be divined and not spoken, too secret 
to tell. 

When you had finished, and you threw your¬ 
self tired into the big chair by the fire, I broke 
into open praise. 

“I’m so glad you like my singing,” you re¬ 
plied. “Tell me just why you like it.” 

I bent across to light your cigarette and spoke 
in a low voice: 

“Because you sing Debussy with your fore¬ 
head, and Schumann with your lips.” 

You looked up suddenly and coloured. I 
was afraid I had offended. But you answered 
simply: 

“It’s worth while singing when people 
understand. Hardly any one ever does.” 




38 


Love Letters 


Lockwood broke into our conversation with 
a question from the other side of the room. 

“I say, Ronnie,” he said, “you’re a musical 
sort of chap. What do you think of Tosca? 
These girls rather pooh-pooh it, especially 
Olive. I think it damned good stuff. It gets 
me every time, especially when Olive sings it.” 

“Of course anything Miss Marsden sings 
would ‘get’ me, as you express it,” I answered, 
smiling. “No, I don’t mean that as a mere 
compliment,” I continued, turning to you 5 “but 
I really think you make the very most of the 
songs you sing. Still, I confess Tosca does not 
impress me as great music. C’est tout a fait 
Georges Cinq.” 

“What on earth do you mean?” asked Lock- 
wood. 

“By ‘Georges Cinq’ I mean simply the sort 
of thing that is popular nowadays. Twenty 
years ago there was a throw-back to medieval¬ 
ism, an Art movement which expressed itself 
in Liberty gowns and Yellow Book poetry, and 
which we called fin-de-siecle. To-day there is 
quite a different stamp on everything we pro¬ 
duce. It ‘gets’ you, as Lockwood says. It 




To A Dead Woman 


39 


appeals, directly and obviously, to a large pub¬ 
lic ; it is sufficiently good technically to stand 
the test of much specialised criticism, and yet 
it is fundamentally vulgar. I called it 
‘Georges Cinq’ for want of a better name. 
Elgar’s ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ is typically 
Georges Cinq. So was Chamberlain’s Tariff 
Commission. So is the decoration of tea-shops 
in the West End. Much of the writing in the 
modern newspaper, for instance, is quite bril¬ 
liant j the form often faultless, as well as vivid; 
the ideas suggestive and true. Yet, somehow, 
there is a quality in it which lowers its artistic 
value. It would not be true to dismiss it as 
merely cheap—it is too good for that. So I 
call it ‘Georges Cinq.’ ” 

You looked up. “Would not Mendelssohn 
come into the same category,” you said, “al¬ 
though he lived before the period you speak 
of?” 

“No, I don’t think so,” I answered. “One 
of the characteristics of this period is a certain 
vigorous masculinity. You find it at its best in 
Rudyard Kipling. You find it less sincerely 
in Puccini. You don’t find it in Mendelssohn 




40 


hove betters 


at all. He is often cheap—but he is never 
Georges Cinq.” 

“Then you admit something good in our 
time, after all?” said Lockwood, a little sar¬ 
castically. 

“Of course. I don’t use the term as one of 
contempt at all. I mean it to sum up all that is 
typical of us, both good and bad. In art, com¬ 
pared to the great ones, the Shakespeares, the 
Homers, and the Wagners of the world, we are 
rather pitiful, and any description of us sounds 
contemptuous. But we have our points, and, 
above all, we are on the up-grade. To you 
and me, who have had the world’s culture 
spread before us in our schools and in our 
travels, the achievements of to-day seem small. 
But average English people—and it is averages 
that count in a democratic age—find an inspira¬ 
tion in contemporary art, which is something 
they can understand, and which is yet higher 
than themselves. They find enshrined in it 
the ideals of their youth, the dreams of their 
purer childhood; and whether they be self- 
educated Trade Unionists from Yorkshire, or 
merely women riding through Mayfair in their 




To A Dead Woman 


4i 


furs and their Daimler cars, it speaks to them 
of what they once were, and what they would 
wish to be.” 

We talked round the fire, all four of us, for 
quite a long time, and I began to place you 
all. Enid Rowe was pretty and popular, with 
many friends. Her centre of gravity was out¬ 
side her work; she danced and went out a great 
deal; met people who were not much use to 
her professionally, and who helped her waste 
her time. Lockwood was one of these. Ap¬ 
parently he came in and out as he liked, and 
was almost one of the household; but I soon 
perceived that you were only a distraction of his 
idle moments, and that he was not a real friend. 
He mixed ordinarily in rather a smart set, went 
to numbers of dances, and often spent his week¬ 
ends at large country houses. But when he 
had no invitations elsewhere he sauntered round 
to you, because he was bored with his own com¬ 
pany, and found you inexpensive to take out. 
Enid was, at the moment, a little swept off her 
feet by his attentions 5 he brought a breath of 
the great world into the confined circle in which 
she moved, of necessity rather than of choice. 




42 


Love Letters 


You were quite different from Enid $ you 
worked, practising or studying music hours a 
day, and spent a great deal of time alone read¬ 
ing. This much I gathered about you round 
the fire 3 but later in the evening, when we 
dined together, I began to understand you 
more. 

I shall never forget that first dinner at Kett- 
ner’s. We must have dined alone many scores 
of times during the next few years in the little 
restaurants of Soho, tucked away from the 
world in the narrow streets on either side of 
Shaftesbury Avenue. But we always came 
back to the scene of our first little dinner—that 
Sunday night, fifteen years ago. 

“There is no place like home, except Kett- 
ner’s,” I told you jauntily, as we turned into 
Church Street, behind the Palace, and entered 
the narrow corridor, hung with testimonials 
from old newspapers telling of the culinary 
glories of the place in the last century. It was 
a damp night, and we were glad, before dining, 
to dry our feet at the fire that burned brightly 
in the parlour on the left. An Italian maid 
brought us cocktails, drawing a little wooden 




To A Dead Woman 


43 


table up between our chairs. As it was Sunday 
we had the room to ourselves; only the cashier 
worked at her books behind the counter, and a 
restless waiter hovered at the door of the res¬ 
taurant, hoping we would come in. When we 
eventually fulfilled his hopes, and passed 
through the doorway, you were as delighted as 
a child at the sight of all the tables dotted 
about the room beneath us, each lighted with 
its little red lamp. 

“How jolly it looks!” you exclaimed. “You 
could have no idea from outside that it would 
be as pretty as this.” 

Opposite the door a party of two were feed¬ 
ing. One of them was a man of great bulk 
with heavy features and high lights on his face. 
He was leaning over his plate, swallowing 
rapidly, and washing down his food with cham¬ 
pagne, leering over the rim of his glass at a 
decolletee companion with large naked arms. 

Several of the tables were unoccupied, and 
we chose one by the window in a far corner on 
the left. I began to read the menu out aloud. 
You were not interested. 

“It’s very important,” I said. “This is the 




44 


Love Letters 


only time I have ever had the pleasure of 
ordering for you5 I want you to have just what 
you like best.” 

“You’ll find me disappointing to dine with,” 
you answered. “You see I don’t eat much; 
and, besides, I never eat meat.” 

This was a blow 3 but I let my inventive 
faculties loose among the fruit and vegetables, 
and composed a menu for you, with Japanese 
salad as the 'piece de resistance and omelette au 
rhum as the connecting link between your din¬ 
ner and mine. The Japanese salad was an 
inspiration. You had never tasted it before. 

By the time it arrived the large man next 
door was smoking a cigar, and leaning with his 
arms on the table, talking confidentially. The 
conversation was punctuated with rather vulgar 
laughter; the man showed his teeth like a wolf; 
the woman rummaged hers with a toothpick. 
Presently they paid their bill and left. The 
place seemed cosier without them; they did not 
fit in like the rest of the diners. 

I tried to persuade you to take a savoury, 
but again you turned me down. 

“You make a great mistake in not cultivating 




To A Dead Woman 


45 


a more aesthetic interest in food,” I said. “We 
eat four meals a day; we spend nearly three 
hours of our time at table; if we are not inter¬ 
ested, think of the amount of time we waste.” 

“I don’t eat four meals a day,” you said. 
“And I don’t spend more than an hour at table 
altogether.” 

“It’s not enough,” I interposed sententiously. 

“Besides,” you continued, ignoring my in¬ 
terruption, “all the aesthetic sense I’ve got re¬ 
volts against filling my body with dead things.” 

“Why?” I asked. 

“Well, I feel—but no, I’d better not tell 
you. You’d only laugh at me.” 

“Believe me, I shall not laugh. I may 
not agree, but it would interest me to know 
what is passing in that charming little head of 
yours.” 

You began, and then hesitated again. “Well 
—it’s difficult to talk about it. I don’t know 
you well enough.” 

I pressed you for the reason, even chaffing 
you in the conventional way about slugs in the 
salad and the leather of your boots. But you 
refused to tell me. 




4 6 


Love Letters 


“Anyhow,” I said, “you’re not a vegetarian 
on principle—merely by preference?” 

“It comes to the same thing,” you said. “If 
I feel strongly about doing a thing, that’s what 
I call doing it on principle.” 

“Not at all. You might want to do some¬ 
thing, but think it wrong, and refrain on prin¬ 
ciple.” 

You swept this aside. 

“If I thought it wrong, I don’t think I 
should really want to do it. If I did really 
want to do it, I should do it and have no prin¬ 
ciples about it.” 

“Anything?” I ventured. 

“Anything.” 

You were quite definite; and the problem 
seemed to you so simple as to be hardly worth 
discussion. I tried to raise some of the ordi¬ 
nary difficulties. 

“One’s mood changes with the surround¬ 
ings, with the people one mixes with, with the 
weather almost. You might want to do things 
in London in a fog that you’d think wrong to 
do under Italian skies, or in a palm grove of 
Egypt.” 




To A Dead Woman 


47 


“Possibly,” you admitted. “After all, they 
may be wrong in one place and right in another. 
But when I say I should do anything I wanted 
to do, I do not mean, of course, that I should 
always act on a temporary impulse. The choice 
lies with me; the desire is in me; but the ‘me 5 
is not only a momentary thing; besides my 
fleeting mood, I have the memory of a past 
‘me 5 to which to refer, the vision of the future 
‘me 5 I would fain become . 55 

“Aren’t you making too much of yourself 
and too little of the wisdom of the world? 
Principles are founded on the collective reason¬ 
ing of greater minds than ours. Why should 
we not take them and follow them? Why be 
pig-headed and presumptuous and go over the 
ground again uselessly, painfully in our own 
lives, buying our own experience afresh ? 55 

Again you were quite definite. 

“Because we must, because that is life. You 
cannot develop your muscles by reading about 
other people doing Muller exercises; you have 
to exercise your own muscles yourself. It 5 s 
not presumptuous for me to want to be me. 




48 


Love Letters 


That’s what I’m here for, and nothing shall 
ever prevent me.” 

Your eyes flashed defiance. There is a 
secret chord in nearly all of us which responds 
in that way to the mention of some subject or 
other—it may be an art or a science, it may be 
a vice or a virtue, it may be some one we love 
or some one we hate. In your case it was al¬ 
ways you—the sense of personal freedom, the 
desire for individual expression. Yet I never 
knew you selfish; and, indeed, it was just this 
that made you such a wonderful lover; for, 
jealous always of your own personality, you 
recognised and cultivated mine, drawing it out 
as occasion arose, and then nestling up to it as a 
mother to her own child. I am not a success¬ 
ful man, darling 5 I am only one of hundreds 
of thousands of men who earn their own living 
through the long years, with just time for rest 
and recreation now and then, and no time to 
live in the highest sense of the word. But 
if I am more sure of myself than I used to be, 
if I can stand calm when those around me are 
excited, or flash with indignation when others 
are indifferent and cold, I owe this spark to 




To A Dead Woman 


49 


you, O friend of my early London days, you 
who were and will always be the best beloved 
of all the world. 

After dinner we wandered down Church 
Street, arm in arm. As we turned down into 
Shaftesbury Avenue, you pressed my arm 
tightly going round the corner. 

“We are going to be great friends,” I said, 
returning the pressure. 

“Yes, I am sure we shall,” you answered. 

We walked home that night through St. 
James’s Park and over the little bridge from 
which the view, once the most beautiful in Lon¬ 
don, is now disturbed and almost blotted out 
by war-time buildings, whose removal has al¬ 
ready been too long delayed. As is the fire¬ 
side of a quiet room to the hurrying life out¬ 
side, so seem these blue-grey silent spaces of 
the town to the glaring brilliance of its streets. 
The parks are called the lungs of London} 
but at night they are its soul. The brilliant 
thoroughfares, whose very buildings, scarred 
with electric signs, flash attention to the super¬ 
ficial needs of the senses, teem with individual 
men and women who swirl like froth upon the 




50 


Love Letters 


surface of the city, their eyes shining with the 
excitement of a momentary purpose, their feet 
hurrying in pursuit of some immediate goal. 
But walking in the parks at night-time we seem 
to get below the froth and frivolity to the ocean 
life of London itself. The grandeur of its 
nocturnal silences, the mystery of its fume- 
tinged atmosphere, the stately outline of its 
buildings from afar, bring home to us the sig¬ 
nificance of London, and give to its immensity 
a proportionate place in the world in which it 
plays its agelong part. You and I, at dinner, 
under the red lamp, were alone and hidden 
from the world: in the streets we were only two 
among millions of others. But in the half- 
light of evening, leaning on the parapet of the 
grey wooden bridge, and gazing at the stars 
reflected motionless in the water beneath us, 
we knew that we were a living part of the great 
universe of which London is only one over¬ 
powering aspect; that its breath was our breath, 
and its soul was our soul. 

“I think I can tell you now,” you said. 

For a moment I did not understand. You 
looked up into my face. 




To A Dead Woman 


51 


“You remember—at Kettner’s, you pressed 
me to tell you something, and I said you would 
laugh. But I don’t think you will, here, to¬ 
night.” 

“Yes?” 

“Don’t you feel as if something were com¬ 
ing out of the night and sweeping through us 
in the silence? Well, I think we are all meant 
to be a channel through which the Divine can 
come into the world. I want to be clean and 
white, so as not to impede this message. And 
I could not be if I ate or drank grossly. That’s 
what I mean. Think of the man and woman 
in Kettner’s at the next table!” 

And you gave a little shiver, pressing my 
arm with yours. 

This was how I first came up against the 
purpose in you, that explained your character 
and gave your life its meaning. No one en¬ 
joyed the things of this world more than you— 
its pleasures, its frivolities, its laughter, and 
its song. As We went about together, I had all 
the fun of taking a child to its first pantomime. 
But you played with life, you were never its 
slave j you loved it, but it was never indispen- 





52 


hove betters 


sable to you; and you were always tolerant of 
the mistakes and vices that you came across on 
every hand, because you saw clearly yourself 
as through a field-glass, because you understood 
how dim and hampered was the ordinary vision 
of the world. 

The simplicity of what you said shifted in 
a moment the centre of gravity of our rela¬ 
tions. Always after that, and increasingly as 
the years went on, I realised that while, to all 
external appearance, I was taking you out in 
London and giving you a good time, showing 
you and teaching you much that you did not 
know, and could never have learned without 
me, yet the real essence of our relationship was 
the very converse of that, and might be ex¬ 
pressed in the image of a child taking the hand 
of some grown-up person across the crowded 
London street. And the hand was yours. 




IV 


Wednesday evening . 

J UST before dinner came a letter from 
Doyle. I wired him yesterday morning 
that I should not be back this week, and he’s 
furious. Several things have turned up that 
need my special attention, he says, and he im¬ 
plores me to run up for the day to-morrow. But 
to-morrow morning he will receive a reply 
telling him, metaphorically, to go to the devil} 
I am not going to leave you now. And that 
has reminded me of the occasion in the early 
days of our friendship, when I played Doyle 
an even worse trick. I thought he would leave 
me for good that time. 

It happened in May, a few months only 
after we met. I didn’t tell you at the time, 
and afterwards I was ashamed to. Then, later, 
I forgot all about it. 

That evening at Kettner’s, when our com- 

53 


54 


Love Letters 


radeship really began, was the prelude of a 
series of precious hours spent with you. Never 
a week passed but found us together. Every 
phase of London life we shared; we told each 
other all our thoughts, and there was nothing 
hid between us. During the week we worked 
—you at your music and I at the Temple; 
from Monday to Friday a telephone message or 
a rare evening meeting was all that our friend¬ 
ship knew. But when the work of the week 
was over, the world of London was ours to 
explore j one by one we added to our store of 
common recollections, until there was not a cor¬ 
ner of the great city but had its associations for 
us, and spoke to me of you, to you of me. You 
took me to all the best concerts, interested me in 
the younger school of pianists and singers, in¬ 
itiated me in the newest chamber music of Eng¬ 
land, France, and Russia. I never let you miss 
a Wagner night at Covent Garden j and in the 
cheap seats at the top of the house I commun¬ 
icated to you my own enthusiasm for German 
opera, and dreamt with you of going together 
to Bayreuth some day, when we could both af¬ 
ford it. Sometimes, in the wave of reaction 




To A Dead Woman 


55 


against art and effort that attacks youth in a 
crowded city, we spent long nights dancing in 
some underground cabaret, when mirth and 
music, lights and laughter, swept away the last 
remnant of formality between us, and we 
yielded ourselves for hours to the three-time 
rhythm of the waltz. Dancing is so different 
nowadays, more intricate, more skilful, more 
varied and capable of finer nuances. I enjoy 
it still, but I am not really at home with it now; 
the old abandon is no more; I feel like a ghost 
haunting a revel in which I have no part. This 
may be only because I am getting older; or it 
may be because we two have never danced to¬ 
gether since the new dancing came in. With 
you for partner, I might even now find in the 
foxtrot the magic of the old-time waltz, that 
caught us and whisked us out of all other mem¬ 
ories to the lilt of Strauss’s music long ago. 

It was after one Sunday night at the old 
Saracens’ Club that I first confessed to myself 
that I was in love with you. All next day 
the scent of you was with me as I walked the 
London streets and as I worked at my table; 
my chambers seemed dingy, my briefs bored 




56 


hove betters 


me, and a sickening feeling of longing held me 
in its grip, longing for you, desire for you, for 
your hair as it brushed my cheek, for your fin¬ 
gers as they mixed with mine, for the warmth 
of your body leaning against my heart, for the 
words you whispered as you danced, for the 
scent of you that still seemed to fill the air 
around me as I breathed, like jasmine garden 
odours wafted through the window in an East¬ 
ern land. 

In my luncheon hour I did the maddest 
thing. Instead of turning into the Temple 
Hall as usual, I walked out into the Strand, 
soon after 12.30; and the great longing to be 
near you was so unbearable that I jumped into 
a taxi and drove to your address. As I neared 
your house I was ashamed and, dismissing the 
cab, I walked by your window, wondering if 
you were there, looking up in the hope of see¬ 
ing you, and yet half frightened to be seen. 
At last—I could not resist it any longer—I rang 
your bell j but no answer came and I was al¬ 
most relieved, because I hardly knew how I 
should explain my visit. You were out, but it 
occurred to me that you might be coming in 




To A Dead Woman 


SI 


from lunch, and I hovered round, pacing the 
pavement, and watching the corner of the street 
round which you would turn if you came. The 
time was slipping by. An empty taxi drew 
slowly towards me, and I signed to it to stop. 
But I could not leave; I even rang again in case 
for some reason you had not heard. Then at 
half-past two I drove back to chambers, having 
wasted two hours of work-time, and spent sev¬ 
eral shillings I could ill afford. 

It was humiliating to my sense of personal 
importance to be so little master of myself and 
so wholly in the grip of your attraction. Be¬ 
sides, like Mr. Thorndike, I had always set 
my face against mixing work with play; and 
all the next morning I battled hard against the 
temptation to ring you up. But it was no use; 
I had to do it. And when you answered the 
call I left the usual civilities unsaid and 
plunged. 

“Look here, dear; I simply must see you. 
It was so wonderful the other night that I can’t 
settle down to work till we’ve talked it over. 
Come round to lunch, won’t you?” 

You reminded me that it was already after 




58 


Love Letters 


twelve, and you were not ready to start 5 be¬ 
sides, you had begun your work so late that 
morning that you didn’t want to leave it then. 

“Well, then, tea,” I suggested. “Come and 
see my chambers 3 you’ve never seen them.” 

Doyle was highly amused at your visit that 
afternoon. It was the first time he had ever 
brought tea to my room for a lady, and he 
entered into it thoroughly, even to the extent 
of going out into Fleet Street, without a word 
from me, to buy four little cakes covered with 
sugar. He never suspected then of what 
trouble you were to be the cause before the 
week was out. 

Your first impression of my chambers was 
one of pure astonishment. The old-fashioned 
black grate, the dust-grey marble mantelpiece, 
the faded wall-paper, yellow with age and dec¬ 
orated only with four engravings of extinct 
judges, yellower still; the unshaded electric 
light above the table with its round china re¬ 
flector “just as if the room were a kitchen pas¬ 
sage,” as you expressed it; the carpet nearly 
threadbare and skirted by a linoleum “sur¬ 
round” of a light brown colour that, were it not 




To A Dead Woman 


59 


grimed with London smoke, would not have 
toned with anything else in the room; these, 
the daily environment that a young barrister 
used to take for granted, struck you as barbar¬ 
ous in the extreme. 

“Why can’t you change it all?” you asked. 
“I should like to have a free hand here for two 
or three days. It would cost next to nothing, 
and you could have a decent atmosphere to 
work in. Look out of the window. The 
lawns, the trees, the railings, the lazy ship¬ 
ping on the river, the lights beginning to trem¬ 
ble on the opposite bank—it’s beautiful—it’s 
as beautiful as any view in London! . . . 

And you sit here and tolerate all this ugliness 
in your room. Why do you do it?” 

“I don’t know. I never even noticed it,” I 
confessed. 

What you wanted to do then, some men have 
done since that time. There are many cham¬ 
bers now that have thrown off their Victorian 
grime and blossomed into habitable rooms, al¬ 
beit a little Georges Cinq in some cases. But 
such changes had not then reached the Temple; 
and, assuring you that any change at all was 




6o 


hove betters 


quite out of the question, I drew up the clients’ 
chair and settled you by the fire with a cigar¬ 
ette. So began your interest in my work at the 
Bar, destined to endure, alas, barely forty- 
eight hours. 

Before tea was over I had yielded to your 
request to let you come and hear one of my 
cases. 

“Pm prosecuting a woman for forgery at the 
Old Bailey some time this week. The day is 
not fixed yet, but I’ll manage to let you know.” 

Next day I did so, as the case was second on 
the list for Thursday. 

You cannot imagine my excitement. I was 
still sufficiently new to the work to be a little 
nervous even of the simplest case. But the 
idea that you would be there stimulated and 
frightened me by turns. I read the depositions 
till I knew them by heart. I prepared my 
opening till I was word-perfect. I imagined 
all sorts of unexpected developments, and dealt 
with them all in a fashion to command your 
admiration. And when I tried to sleep on 
Wednesday night the case went round and 
round in my head like the wheel of an engine. 




To A Dead Woman 


61 


Arriving at the Old Bailey together soon af¬ 
ter ten, we managed to get you a good seat in 
the court where the trial was to take place. I 
shall never forget that day. One contretemps 
followed another 3 an evil fate seemed to dog 
our steps. After a short interval the judge 
entered, an old man with a sallow wrinkled 
face, and long knotted fingers. The first case 
called was a most unpleasant one. The pris¬ 
oner was a lad of sixteen, but, small for his age, 
he looked a mere child as he took his stand in 
the dock between his warders, with an expres¬ 
sion of frightened obstinacy, like a hunted thing 
at bay. The boy lived in a slum tenement, 
where the family slept crowded together in one 
room—he and his parents and his little sister. 
The charge against him was one of incest 3 the 
whole family were suffering from disease 3 and 
in view of the evidence the judge ordered all 
women out of the court. You burned with 
indignation at the insult. 

“Look at that boy, hemmed round by a lot 
of men with no hearts and no human sympa¬ 
thies, being tried with fusty formalities for an 
offence which his surroundings and his upbring- 




62 


Love Letters 


ing almost drove him to commit. He is only a 
child, and he’s almost mad with fear; he has no 
mother near him to hold his hand, and no 
woman may even stay to see him judged.” 

“But the evidence-” I began. 

“I don’t care about the evidence. It doesn’t 
matter what it is. The judge ought to be in a 
bath-chair on the sea-front; he is far too old 
to deal with children. The lawyers in their 
wigs ought to refuse to handle such a case in the 
circumstances. It’s we, Society, our rotten 
civilisation that is on its trial. The whole pro¬ 
ceedings are an abomination from beginning to 
end.” 

At your request I left you to pace the vesti¬ 
bule, while I went in to follow the trial. It 
lasted but a short time; and the boy was heavily 
punished. 

“You have been convicted,” said the judge, 
addressing his little victim, “of one of the most 
heinous offences known to the law. In your 
case, too, circumstances have aggravated the 
offence. Your counsel has appealed for mercy 
on account of your youth, and has asked me to 
have you sent to a Borstal institution rather 





To A Dead Woman 


63 


than to prison. These institutions are intended 
for lads whose offences are quite different from 
yours, and I would not contaminate one of them 
with your presence. You will go to prison for 
six months, with hard labour.” 

I was staggered by the savage sentence 3 but 
I had only time to hurry to the door and beckon 
you in before my own case was called. The 
new prisoner, whom I saw for the first time, 
and whom for some reason I had pictured as a 
rough sort of woman, turned out to be a frail 
and rather attractive girl of eighteen. She had 
a mass of wavy red hair, and the May sunshine, 
coming down through the round roof, just 
caught her head, drawing the full beauty of her 
colouring, and tingeing the stray threads of the 
hair with gold. I never liked red-haired people. 
Not only I never made a friend of one, but 
frankly, I cannot sit near them without a feel¬ 
ing of uneasiness and a sense of distrust. But 
I always have to look at a red-haired woman $ 
there is something magnetic to the eye in the 
depth of colour, so rich, so sensuous, so strong 
against the background of the world. 

I was representing one of those tea-shop firms 




6 4 


Love Letters 


whose branches are to be found in nearly every 
main street in London. The girl had been ar¬ 
rested in Oxford Street because, after eating 
a meal worth one and sevenpence, she had 
first erased the shilling from her check with 
a piece of indiarubber, and then paid sevenpence 
at the cash desk as she went out. I was asked 
by my clients to press the charge, in view of the 
large number of such cases by which the com¬ 
pany was being defrauded, most of which 
remained undiscovered. The fact that the pris¬ 
oner had a piece of indiarubber in her posses¬ 
sion they considered to be some indication that 
she might have been committing the offence 
systematically. 

I delivered my opening with an air of pom¬ 
pous detachment, and examined my witnesses 
with brevity and clearness. The defence had 
not a leg to stand on. The jury found the girl 
guilty without leaving the box. Conscious of 
my professional success, and with all the tri¬ 
umph of a beginner, I turned round to look 
for you, and caught sight of your face for the 
first time since the trial began. Your gaze, 
puzzled, terrified, was fixed on the prisoner. 




To A Dead Woman 


65 


I realised in a flash that any interest you might 
have had in me and my work was entirely lost 
in your human anxiety for the red-haired girl 
in the dock. Shame and mortification passed 
suddenly through my mind, and it was with a 
faltering voice that I addressed the judge on 
the question of punishment, reminding him that 
my clients, though extremely reluctant to pros¬ 
ecute a girl so poor and young, were obliged 
to protect themselves against systematic rob¬ 
bery, and hoped that one case, if publicly dealt 
with in an exemplary fashion, would act as a 
deterrent on others for the future. The defence 
then appealed for mercy. The girl had no 
parents, no relations, no friends. Brought up 
in a foundling hospital, she had been sent out 
into the world less than two years before to 
take up a situation as a general servant. She 
had already had three places, and at the time 
of her arrest was out of work, with only a few 
pence in her possession. She was hungry, and 
could not have paid one and sevenpence for 
a meal even had she wished to do so. She had 
never committed a crime before; neither she, 
nor any one she had associated with, was known 




66 


Love Letters 


to the police 3 she had yielded to temptation in 
a moment of starvation and despair. The 
judge, taking into consideration on the one 
hand her youth, and on the other, the circum¬ 
stances of the prosecution and the fact that 
forgery is regarded by the law of England as 
a very serious offence, sentenced her to six 
month’s imprisonment, and hoped it would 
be a lesson to her to turn over a new leaf when 
she came out of prison. The girl left the dock 
sobbing 3 and as I turned to look at you I saw 
that you, too, were in tears. 

When I joined you your eyes were flashing, 
and your gentle mouth was hardened into a 
bitter curve. 

“How could you?” was all you said, and I 
knew that all your pent-up indignation against 
the injustice and inequality of modern society 
was focussed upon me. “She was hungry, and 
in all London there was not one to pay heed to 
her or lend her a helping hand. But she stole a 
shilling’s worth of food, and immediately all 
the hordes of police and lawyers and judges 
yelp round her like a pack of hounds and brand 
her as a criminal for the rest of her life. And a 




To A Dead Woman 


67 


criminal she will become! We women do not 
take injustice lying down. She will wreak her 
revenge on you all some day, though she break 
herself in the attempt.” 

I tried to explain. Though you called it 
theft, in law' she was guilty of much more 
than that, because by altering the bill with her 
piece of indiarubber she had committed forgery. 
The judge had passed a very lenient sentence; 
she did not even get hard labour. 

“But she ought not to have been punished at 
all. She wanted help, not punishment.” 

“Pm afraid the Law Courts are not a char¬ 
itable institution,” I began. 

“But surely there’s a First Offenders’ Act? 
The whole thing is criminal—your judges, your 
police, your laws, your lawyers, your system, 
your cruelty—it all wants blowing sky-high, 
and one day we women will have to do it.” 

I told you that things were not really as 
bad as you thought. In the first place, it was 
very rare to have two such cases as you had seen. 
One could attend the Old Bailey every month 
for a year, and not happen on more than a very 
few instances altogether. In the second place, 




68 


Love Letters 


I bid you remember that the judge was old, 
almost the last of a past generation, whose ideas 
of severity were fast dying out. 

“None of the younger men who are now be¬ 
ing appointed to the position of judge or police 
magistrate would have dealt with those cases 
in that way. Indeed, among them are many 
who regard their responsibilities from the 
highest human standpoint, and strive within 
their narrow sphere to do good and not harm, 
to help and not to punish.” 

This was an optimistic statement then; but, 
on the whole, it has been borne out by events. 
The atmosphere of the Law Courts, though 
still extremely misguided, is very different from 
what you saw the only time you entered one 
fifteen years ago. For nothing I ever urged 
could induce you to enter a Law Court again. 

We went to lunch at a small tea-shop in 
Cheapside. It was with the utmost difficulty 
that I persuaded you to stay, as you wished to 
go home. 

“We’ll forget all about the Old Bailey and 
talk of something else,” I said. 




To A Dead Woman 


69 


But, as we sat over our poached eggs on toast, 
you returned to the attack. 

“Why don’t you leave all this?” you asked. 
“It makes me despair of men when I see some 
one like you taking it all as a matter of course, 
and actually making your living by it.” 

I protested that it was not as bad as you im¬ 
agined. The principle of English law is that 
both parties should have the fullest oppor¬ 
tunity to put their case; the judge and jury 
have to decide between them. The barrister’s 
business is to put his side of the question as 
thoroughly as possible. Unless he does this 
the system breaks down. He is not concerned 
with the rights and the wrongs of it—his job 
is mainly limited to his own side; the truth 
emerges as the resultant of two conflicting 
forces, of which he is one. All the laws are 
not perfect; but they are made by the nation 
and must be carried out until they are altered. 
Decisions, whether of judge or jury, are some¬ 
times mistaken; but no system can be proof 
against human error, and on the whole justice 
is done. But the barrister is responsible neither 
for the law, nor for the decision; he has to do his 




70 


Love Letters 


job as thoroughly as he can, just as the me¬ 
chanic has to turn out his piece of machinery 
without concerning himself as to the use to 
which the machine is to be put. 

“I admit all you say,” I concluded, “about the 
case I did to-day. But I am no more responsible 
for it than a chauffeur is responsible for what 
takes place inside his taxi.” 

“But after all,” you insisted, “is it a worthy 
way of spending your life, your brains? Could 
you, after twenty years of it, point to anything 
you have achieved for others, or for your 
country? Is anybody really the better for 
what you are doing? Are you yourself any the 
better for it?” 

“One must live,” I answered. “It’s as good 
a way of earning a living as any other.” 

“I wonder? You men attach so much im¬ 
portance to earning a living, and so little to the 
way you earn it. I could earn much more in 
other ways than I do by singing. But I feel, 
however hard the life, however uphill the path, 
that I am doing something worth while for 
myself and for others. Don’t you men ever 
think of that when you choose a career, when 




To A Dead Woman 


7 1 


you devote all your week, all your year, all 
your busy life to some profession or business?” 

Sitting opposite me at the little table, your 
face glowed with a strange earnestness. And 
all of a sudden I noticed the sordidness of every¬ 
thing around you. There were coffee stains on 
the cloth j the crockery was thick and ugly, the 
cutlery cheap and worn. The waitress wore a 
frayed dress, and her wrists and hands were 
thickened with work and were streaked with 
grimy lines, like rivers on a school map. Sallow 
and sad were the faces of the other customers, as 
they snatched their midday meals on every side 
of us , the women were anaemic and shabby, 
nearly every man had lines of strain around his 
mouth and eyes. Beyond you, outside the low 
dark room, was the street. A gleam of sunshine 
lighted the upper windows of the houses op¬ 
posite, and cast a slanting line of yellow on the 
wall. But below it, in the shadow, a procession 
of monster motor-buses filed slowly and noisily 
by j a ceaseless throng of clerks and business 
people hurried to and fro past the window. 
This was our modern world, this was London; 
we were all a part of it, a myriad cells circulat- 




72 


Love Letters 


ing in the life-blood of its veins, making it 
what it is, yet dependent upon it, all of us—all 
of us, except you. And, as I looked into your 
face, I felt that you were somehow a thing 
apart; that your centre of gravity was not here, 
that you belonged to the golden gleam of sun¬ 
shine on the opposite wall. 

“Look here, Olive,” I said suddenly, “we 
can’t talk of better things in this beastly place. 
It’s glorious early summer weather, and I’m sick 
of being tied up in chambers. Let’s get out into 
the country all day to-morrow, you and I to¬ 
gether, and forget the smoke and the Law 
Courts and the selfishness and everything you 
hate, and bathe ourselves in God’s sunshine 
just for once. I can’t wait for the week-end. 
Besides, the weather may have changed by then. 
Come to-morrow—I’ll cut my work3 it doesn’t 
matter a damn after all.” 

You said “Yes,” and that was how we came 
to spend our first day on the river. 

You would remember this as clearly as I 
do j but I have come to a part of the story that 
I never told you. 




To A Dead Woman 


73 


When I got back to chambers that afternoon 
I found Doyle full of importance. 

“I’ve got a defence for you for tomorrow 
afternoon,” he announced. 

“How on earth did you get that?” I inquired. 

“Well, it’s this way, sir,” he said, his little 
moustache bristling with a sense of achievement. 
“Mr. Essex’s clerk was with me when you did 
that forgery case to-day; he was asking about 
you, sir. I told him you were coming on fine, 
and you’d be doing a big business soon. There’s 
nothing like bluff in our job, sir.” And he 
smiled a knowing smile, the little puckers 
spreading round his half-closed eyes. “ ‘Look 
here, Doyle,’ said he, ‘you come along with me 
at lunch-time, and I’ll get you a defence.’ 
‘How’s that?’ I said. And he told me that 
Mr. Essex had just told him that he couldn’t 
do one of Bradley and Hampden’s cases to¬ 
morrow, as he had to go up to Liverpool for the 
Treasury on a big job. ‘And if you come along, 
I think I can get Mr. Essex to hand it over 
to you.’ So off I went, sir, and I’ve got the 
case. It’s only a small one—there’s nothing 
to it, sir. But it’s a good thing for us to get 




74 


Love Letters 


in with Bradley and Hampden j there’s no 
knowing what it may lead to.” 

Here was a contretemps! How could I 
break it to Doyle that I was off to Maidenhead 
with you? I did not dare to do so there and 
then, and, as I thought over it, I half deter¬ 
mined to postpone our day on the river. Any¬ 
how, I read the case and put off my decision 
till tea-time. But as the day closed in, and the 
melancholy of evening began to settle on the 
Temple gardens, the great longing for you 
came over me once more. I remembered again 
—indeed, I had never forgotten it—the call 
of your body in the dance; I saw your face as 
it watched that red-haired girl in the dock and 
as it appeared to me in the sordid City luncheon 
shop. I wanted you as I have never wanted 
you since, so that nothing else counted in the 
balance j my work, my career, my duty were 
as nothing in the scale. 

But I did not dare tell Doyle. As I left 
chambers, I merely asked what time the case 
was likely to come on. 

“It’s fairly low in the list, sir j it won’t be 
before the afternoon, anyway.” 




To A Dead Woman 


IS 


“That’s a good thing,” I said. “I’ve got 
a racking headache, and I don’t know how I 
shall be feeling to-morrow.” 

And when to-morrow came I sent a mes¬ 
senger boy to chambers with the brief, and a 
note to explain that I was too seedy to come 
out. Before Doyle even got my message I 
was on the way to call for you. 

I need not remind you of that day on the 
Thames. The weather was perfect when we 
arrived at Skindle’s; and, While they prepared 
a luncheon basket, we went down to the boat¬ 
house, chose a punt, and packed it with red 
cushions. The river was almost deserted, for 
the season had hardly begun; and all day long 
we only noticed a few ladies in white dresses, 
lying close against the bank, or gliding down 
the stream under Japanese parasols. 

You had never been to Maidenhead before, 
and I was glad you saw it first on a week-day, 
out of season, rather than as we mostly see it, 
busy with pleasure-seekers at the midsummer 
week-end. The dreamy stillness of the river 
reaches; the trim houses flinging their green 
lawn-carpets down to the water; an occasional 




7 6 


Love Letters 


plash of oars, or sound of voices, as a boat went 
past} these, and the canopy of young leaves 
that curved above our heads, were our sense- 
impressions of that lazy day, while we held 
our picnic, moored to the bank beneath the 
trees. 

Ah, dear, those were golden days, but in my 
memory that Friday remains almost the most 
wonderful of all. After lunch we lay side 
by side in the cushions, looking upward into the 
trellised roof of branches that almost hid the 
sky. We talked of God and man, of life and 
music} of what beauty is, and why the world 
is all awry. Your hand lay motionless in mine, 
until I turned towards you, and leant over you 
as I spoke. Then you drew my arm upward 
against your heart and I knew that you felt 
what I was feeling, what I had felt indeed 
every hour of the days since we had last danced 
together. And I bent down until our lips met. 
It was the first time we ever kissed. 

How glad I have always been, O best be¬ 
loved of all the world, that our first kiss was 
in the open air. This love of ours was not a 
town-bred thing} it came into the London at- 




To A Dead Woman 


77 


mosphere from outside, as the sunshine cleaves 
the clouds and fills the city street. Here, on 
the water, it was free, breathing its native air; 
and we welcomed it without reservation, keep¬ 
ing it with us all the future days. No pas¬ 
sionate embrace that thrills the senses in the 
darkness, no twining of two bodies in the silence 
of the night, had half the power to unite the 
souls of lovers, nor was ever half so sweet as 
that first kiss of ours in the daylight that early 
summer afternoon. I nestled down against 
you, with my hand upon your shoulder, my 
face against your cheek; and we lay there for 
an hour, talking only in an undertone and 
hardly moving for fear of breaking the web 
of sympathy that love had woven round us. 
And the leaves stirred a little in a gathering 
breeze; now and then there was a plash of 
oars as a boat went by. 

But it came to an end as all things do; and 
we roused ourselves to paddle back to the boat¬ 
house by the bridge. Shakespeare is never 
more true to life than When towards the close 
of some drama he lets the action rest awhile in 
a scene of lyric stillness—Jessica embracing her 




78 


Love Letters 


love in the Venice moonlight, Ferdinand woo¬ 
ing Miranda beside a legendary sea. At rest, 
after the passion of our dance night and the 
disappointment when the Law Court atmos¬ 
phere grated on our friendship, we both fell 
back reclining on the lap of the river and ceased 
thinking of the world around us for a while. 
But on the train journey home, seated opposite 
each other in the corner of a dusty third-class 
carriage, thoughts of yesterday came to both 
our minds, and we knew that the drama of 
life had still to be played. 

“Do you feel, Ronnie, that you must go on 
giving your life to the law?” you asked. “Is 
there nothing else you can do?” 

“I will think about it,” I said. “But I’ve 
got well started now, and I don’t like turning 
back and beginning all over again.” 

You looked disappointed, and there was the 
same blank sadness in your face that I had 
noticed the day before. 

“I will think about it. I promise that,” 
I repeated. 

“Do, dear,” was all you said. And you leant 




To A Dead Woman 


79 


across and took my hand. I simply had to kiss 
you, and we spoke of the matter no more. 

When I arrived in chambers next day Doyle 
hovered round me uneasily. He shifted the 
papers on my table 3 he poked the fire 3 he drew 
the old curtains a few inches farther back 3 he 
took the inkstand to his office and stumped back 
with it freshly filled. 

“Out with it, Doyle,” I said. “What’s the 
trouble?” 

“There’s no trouble, sir. Only it’s a pity 
you lost that case of Bradley and Hampden’s. 
It never came on yesterday after all. When I 
found that it wouldn’t come on till this morn¬ 
ing, I ’phoned through to you, and they told 
me you’d gone out in the early morning, sir.” 

I felt like a schoolboy caught on truant! 
Doyle peered at me over his glasses, and a 
troubled look came into his face as he spoke, 
jerkily and with an obvious effort. 

“I’ve been at this job much longer than you, 
sir. And I’ve seen a lot of gentlemen go under 
at it, through not being here when they’re most 
wanted. I’d not like that to happen to you. 
Every gentleman gets his chances, but they 




8o 


Love Letters 


only come once or twice, and, if he don’t take 
them, they go to some one else.” 

“After all, Doyle,” I said, smiling, “it’s my 
affair, not yours.” 

“Excuse me, sir,” he replied, more sternly 
this time, “that’s where you make a mistake. 
We sink or swim together, and I’ve got a wife 
and children to keep. I don’t like changes, 
but if we’re going to chuck chances away, I’d 
best be looking out for another job.” 

I was so light-hearted after my long day 
with you that I could not take him too seriously. 

“Ho, ho! my friend,” I said, laughing; “you 
threaten?” 

“No, sir,” he said, with unchanging solem¬ 
nity, “I merely make bold to tell you how it 
stands. They told me on the ’phone that you’d 
left early yesterday in white flannels, and they 
thought you’d gone into the country for the 
day. That ain’t business, sir; and it won’t do 
for it to happen much, or you might as well 
shut up shop.” 

“All right, Doyle,” I said, “it shan’t happen 
again. I’ve always worked pretty steadily, 
haven’t I?” 




To A Dead Woman 


81 


“Yes, sir. That’s why I’ve stayed on here 
when I might have gone over to Pump Court 
with Mr. Denison. But I thought you meant 
to stick it somehow.” 

“So I do, Doyle. So I do. We’ll forget 
about yesterday and do some work. What 
about the insurance case?” 

And we changed the subject, which was 
never mentioned again between us. But I 
made a stern resolve to pull myself together 
and not let pleasure clash with duty during 
week-day working hours. And though your 
appeal haunted me from time to time, and on 
my days of depression I flirted with the idea 
of a change, gradually the routine of my pro¬ 
fession held me more and more firmly in its 
grip, and I settled down to the life-work in 
which you had no part, building round it a 
ring fence to keep you and your ideals outside. 

I thought I was being strong. In my con¬ 
ventional way I prided myself on vanquishing 
temptation. Only long afterwards did I come 
to know that I had shirked the call to live, 
and that that was why I lost you, and why our 
paths drifted apart. Doyle was wiser than he 




82 


hove betters 


knew when he said that chances come but once 
or twice, and if neglected go elsewhere. I had 
the chance to breast the waves of an intenser 
life with you, and I chose to stay safe on the 
shore. The chance did not return, and now 
it is too late. I am still reading briefs and 
earning guineas, prosecuting, defending, ap¬ 
pealing, worrying out the details of personal 
disputes, unravelling knotty points of law. I 
am not famous, but I make a good living, and 
Doyle is likewise well content. Soon I shall 
take silk and make a better living still. But 
watching the glow of sunset over the London 
roofs as I walk home on an April evening, or 
lying sleepless in my room in Grosvenor Street 
all alone the long years through, I can hear 
you now as you sat opposite me in the tea-shop 
in Cheapside: 

“Is anybody really the better for what you are 
doing? Are you yourself any the better for 
it?” 

God bless you, darling. 




V 


Thursday morning . 

I T is snowing. I slept so badly last night, 
dearest. My nerves were all on edge 3 the 
strain of these last days has been greater than 
I thought. Or perhaps, after months of work, 
the relaxation of three days in the country has 
shown me how tired I was. Or, again, it may 
be only the weather 3 snow falls with a low 
barometer. 

I breakfasted much earlier than these people 
are accustomed to do. Even Flora was less 
cordial than usual when I appeared in the kit¬ 
chen before half-past seven and found her in 
the act of lighting the fire. As for Thorndike, 
he was still in bed, I suppose 3 at any rate, there 
was no one else about. A smart wind was 
blowing outside, and the ground was already 
white, so I gave up the idea of an early morn¬ 
ing walk, and warmed myself by the kitchen 
83 


8 4 


hove betters 


fire, while Flora, after lighting one for me in 
the parlour, returned to prepare the breakfast. 
By way of making conversation, I remarked 
that she seemed to work hard. 

“It’s slavery, that’s what it is,” she answered. 
“Morning till night, morning till night.” 

She was as nervy and depressed as I am, for 
all her buxom looks. I suggested that she had 
a safe livelihood and a roof over her head, and 
that many a girl in London would gladly 
change with her. She softened a little, but 
held to her point. 

“We’re buried ’ere. We see nothing of 
life. What is there to do of an afternoon when 
things are quiet?” 

“Have you no friends, no one to take you 
out?” I asked, inviting confidence. 

“That’s just it. Father’s that particular; 
all the young chaps ’ere are either not good 
enough, or else they’re too good. That’s what 
father is. ’E says ’e’s learnt a lesson from my 
sister, and ’e’s not going to be caught napping 
twice. An’ so yer seem to light fires, an’ make 
tea, an’ wash up, an’ get the dinner, an’ get 
the supper, an’ wash up again, an’ it’s bedtime 




To A Dead Woman 


8 5 


before yer know where you are. I tell you 
straight, sir, Pd rather be working on my own 
in London, whatever the risk, than living at 
’ome down ’ere as safe as houses.” 

The same unrest everywhere. This pesti¬ 
lent urge within us all, driving us to energy and 
adventure, pushing us forward in the path of 
race evolution, heedless of individual wreckage 
and of those who fall by the way. And at the 
present juncture the casualties are mostly 
among the young, and especially the women. 
Their sphere is most confined, albeit their 
dreams are highest; for them the call of the 
future is strongest, and the wrench with the 
past has most of pain. Town bred or country 
bred, the girl of the shop or the young lady 
of fashion, they are all in the grip of this same 
pestilent urge; and the Life Force laughs at 
their tragedies, for it knows they must obey. 
Flora, no doubt, before many months are over, 
will be standing in all weathers in the queue of 
some workman’s tram in Lambeth. She will 
not be any happier, perhaps ; but of such are 
the Kingdom of Heaven. 

After all, she is not very different from 




86 


Love Letters 


Enid. Take away the personal appearance and 
the fortuitous circumstance of their upbringing, 
and I can see a clear resemblance. For Enid, 
had she been a peasant girl, would have drifted 
to town (as indeed she did) to escape from her 
vague discontent; and Flora, had she run up 
against a Lockwood, would surely have got 
herself into the same tangle. 

Poor Enid! I can see her still as she sat with 
us in the parlour of the Fox and Pelican at 
Grayshott that Sunday night, her eyes now hard 
and bitter, now melting to the softness of tears. 
Do you remember that week-end? It was 
one of the saddest of our story $ but it brought 
us very near to one another, and carries our 
friendship yet one stage further on. 

It was not long after our day on the river, 
somewhere about the end of June, if I remem¬ 
ber aright. Anyhow it was midsummer 
weather, in the very height of the London sea¬ 
son. Both you and Enid had had several en¬ 
gagements, singing and playing at concerts and 
“At Homes.” You were tired; the air was 
stifling j the glare and the heat reflected from 
the pavements struck our eyes as we emerged 




To A Dead Woman 


87 


from the shade of a doorway into the London 
street. We had spent one or two Sundays 
walking in the woods near town, in Epping For¬ 
est, and in Buckinghamshire; but such days, 
though tiring, seemed all too short a time to 
spend together. So we planned to go away for 
the week-end, and pressed Enid and Lock- 
wood into the service to make up a walking 
party in the Hindhead country from Friday to 
Monday. We booked rooms at the Fox and 
Pelican 5 and left town by train in the early 
evening after Friday’s work was done. 

A train journey out of London at twilight 
has always a tinge of melancholy. The sparkle 
of the dying sun on the rows of London roofs, 
and, as the houses grow fewer and the earth 
grows greener, the long still shadows of the 
trees upon the grass; the blank pathway of a 
stream in its deep channel past the willows, 
and the rose-glow of the horizon beyond the 
western slopes—they clash too suddenly with 
mind-pictures of pavements, shops, and traffic; 
and mixing ill with our London memories, pro¬ 
duce revulsion and unrest. 

“Why are we boxed up in London, millions 




88 


Love Letters 


of us, all our days, when all this beauty, this 
serene stillness, is waiting for us so close out¬ 
side?” 

This was the question some one asked $ and 
we all gave different answers. Enid’s was the 
frankest, but there was a note of defiance in her 
voice that I had not noticed before. 

“Because I would rather not be boxed up in 
the country all my life, thank you. We only 
live once, after all.” 

Here spoke Flora, and almost every country 
girl. Enid’s childhood had been spent in a 
country vicarage, and her passion for town was 
“the desire of the moth for the star.” 

Lockwood’s answer was similar, though dif¬ 
ferently expressed. 

“Every one one knows lives in town,” he 
said. “One must be there.” 

Gregariousness, not untinged with snobbery. 
The same pestilent urge, but with the original 
purpose lost. 

Your answer was characteristic of you. 

“I have to be in town for my work,” you 
said. “I could study even better in the coun¬ 
try 5 my voice would be pure, and I love the 




To A Dead Woman 


89 


country best. But I should hear no other 
music, and there would be no one to hear 
mine.” 

For you town had no blind subconscious at¬ 
traction; you were there for a purpose, the 
purpose that was in all you did. 

“But Ronnie hasn’t given his reason yet,” 
you continued. “Now, then, Ronnie, we can’t 
let you off.” 

“Well,” I drawled, “I don’t really know. 
You see I’ve always been in London, and I’ve 
taken a job there, and there I suppose I shall 
always stay.” 

Inertia, the impossibility of taking a big step, 
or making a big change. I had my call to 
beauty; often I hovered on the brink of leav¬ 
ing town and seeking my fortune in the wide 
world outside. But I never have, and I never 
shall. What I failed to do with you when 
you were there, I shall never do by myself now 
that you are gone. Dearest and best, you never 
knew how much you were to me. With you 
I might have been a man; without you I am 
only a machine, with memories. O God! 
with memories. . . . But I must not give 




90 


Love Letters 


way until the end} and I will not let anything 
crack within me, till then. . . . 

We were all glad after a late supper to go 
at once to rest, for we promised ourselves a long 
walk next day. A heavy morning rain, how¬ 
ever, delayed our start, and it was not till nearly 
eleven that we sallied forth, with our luncheon 
in two large brown-paper packets, and with four 
good ash sticks in our hands. Only those who 
live and work in London the whole year round 
know the joys of a week-end walk in the Surrey 
hills. The Londoner may not understand the 
ways of birds and cattle, the life of trees and 
flowers, and to the rural mind he is but a sorry 
fool floundering in a world he wots not of} but 
he can appreciate the beauty of the country as 
the countryman himself, for all his agricultural 
skill and more observant eye, can never do. It 
has often been noticed as extraordinary that in 
the classic literature of the ancients, so amazing 
in its modernity that no thought or turn of 
phrase of contemporary work seems new—what 
poet of to-day has sobbed a modern love with 
the unerring realism of Catullus!—there is no 
description of scenery for its own sake, no hint 




To A Dead Woman 


9i 


that sea and sky and isle and mountain had 
power to rouse the sense of beauty in the an¬ 
cient mind. Surely this is because there were 
then no towns in the modern sense. In Athens, 
even in Rome itself, the veriest clubman was 
almost country bred, and lived within a few 
minutes of those scenes which our townsmen 
visit only in their holidays, or during a snatched 
week-end. We lose much, more even than we 
realise, by the centripetal tendency of our civil¬ 
isation y but at least it sharpens our appreciation 
of what we have lost. We moderns love the 
country, just as the grown man realises the full 
beauty of childhood only when his own can 
return no more. 

We walked briskly up the hill to the cross¬ 
roads, and thence to the stone erected by the 
side of the Portsmouth Road “in detestation of 
a barbarous murder” by robbers a hundred and 
fifty years ago. A sailor had drawn his pay at 
Portsmouth, and stopped on the way to London 
at the little inn near the top of Hindhead. 
There he treated three men to ale, and they 
went with him on his way, robbed him of his 
purse, and flung his dead body down the moun- 




92 


Love Letters 


tain side. It was found in the hollow known 
as the “Devil’s Punch-Bowl,” and above, on 
the summit of the hill, his three murderers were 
hanged at the highest point between London 
and the sea. We clambered up to the cross 
that still marks the spot where the gallows 
stood, and waited for a while surveying the 
widest expanse of scenery in the South of Eng¬ 
land. The line of the Surrey range to Leith 
Hill and Reigate, the detail of the plain below 
that began with a few roofs among the dark 
pines almost underneath us, and spread through 
squares of brighter green, past mansion and 
farm and village church, to be lost in the dis¬ 
tance of the Sussex Weald, blurred and nebu¬ 
lous—all this, so well known to Lockwood and 
to me, we showed to you girls who had never 
seen it before, and who saw it now in the clear 
light of midday after the storm, or rather be¬ 
tween the showers. For already, on the trail 
of the great cloud that had passed north-east¬ 
ward and still hung over London, followed an¬ 
other in hot pursuit, rolling upwards from the 
sea; and it was evident to all of us that we were 
in for a wet afternoon. We spent a few mo- 




To A Dead Woman 


93 


ments there on the summit, in doubt what to do. 
You were loth to give up your walk; but you 
w'ere never strong even in those days, and I 
asked you not to risk it. 

“You boys are dying for exercise,” you said, 
protesting; and at least so far as I was con¬ 
cerned this was true. 

Enid decided the matter for herself by 
bluntly telling us she was not going to face it, 
and the rest of us could do as we liked. Again 
I noticed an unwonted ill-temper in her tone. 
Lockwood seemed to want to go back too; he 
turned aside and said something quickly to her 
in an undertone. 

“No, you boys had better take your walk; 
Olive and I will go back together,” she replied, 
turning away from him and loud enough for 
us to hear. 

“Yes, Ronnie, that is best, don’t you think?” 
you added, appealing to me. “You two go 
ahead; and if it’s wet you can cut it short, and 
we’ll give you tea when you come in. Think 
of it! A good hot bath, and tea and jam, and 
us to pour out for you!” 

So you girls went home, and Lockwood and 




94 


Love Letters 


I went on alone. We wheeled downwards to 
the left, bought two bottles of beer at the Pride 
of the Valley—that ugly brick “pub” with a 
beautiful name standing all alone among the 
pools and rivulets that border on Tilford Com¬ 
mon—and leaving the road again consumed our 
luncheon on a slope hard by among the pines, 
close to one of those curious knobs of sand and 
heather that rise out of the common and are 
known as the Devil’s Jumps. 

As you know, I never liked Lockwood. He 
is taller and bigger than I am, and quite good- 
looking; a slender nose and pronounced chin 
gave a certain distinction to his profile, and the 
line of the mouth lent it force, hard and thin, 
and curiously immobile. But his eyes were 
shifty; and his forehead, not broad enough, was 
framed in fine hair, fair in colour and curly, that 
completed the weakness of the upper part of his 
face. His manner had a superficial fascination, 
and he was undoubtedly popular in certain cir¬ 
cles, especially with the opposite sex, to whom 
he paid very deliberate attention, and whom he 
thoroughly despised. I never heard him say 
anything good of any woman behind her back; 




To A Dead Woman 


95 


indeed the subject of women, whether in the 
abstract or the concrete, seemed to rouse in him 
a scarce concealed antagonism, that vented it¬ 
self sometimes in a contemptuous laugh, some¬ 
times in a sneer. No, I never liked Lockwood; 
but that day I found him at least more interest¬ 
ing than usual. A little rift showed itself in 
the veil that hung permanently between his 
real self and the outside world; there was less 
decision in his utterances, a shade of reflective¬ 
ness and a note of interrogation in his voice. 

As we sat in our mackintoshes munching 
sandwiches beneath the shelter of the close- 
grown pines—for the threatened rain had al¬ 
ready overtaken us—he asked me my view 
about marriage. I had never known him 
broach an abstract question before, and was not 
a little surprised until I guessed the reason of 
his query. 

“You don’t believe in marriage; I have often 
heard you say so. But do you think it is never 
justified?” 

“Never is a big word,” I answered. “But, 
speaking generally, no.” 

“Why not?” 




9 6 


hove betters 


“One loves or one does not love. In the 
first case there is no need of a legal tie; in the 
second it is merely a damned nuisance.” 

“Yes, yes,” he interposed impatiently, “we 
know all that. But for the woman, for the 
child, perhaps, in a world of conventions?” 

“Ah! now you are changing your ground,” 
I said. “I thought you were speaking theo¬ 
retically, of marriage as an institution. If you 
are going to embark on questions of expediency, 
then the answer must depend on the circum¬ 
stances of each particular case, and the char¬ 
acter of the parties involved; one cannot gen¬ 
eralise at all. It becomes a question of whether 
the general inadvisibility of marriage is out¬ 
weighed by some particular consideration. A 
man should rarely marry for his own sake; but 
for the woman, for the children, in the world 
as it is, it may be the only decent thing he can 
do. Yet even for them it is far less neces¬ 
sary than they are apt to believe.” 

“But a woman in our class of life can hardly 
bear a child deliberately out of wedlock?” 

“It’s difficult, of course. It may be very 
hard for the child. But if it’s done on prin- 




To A Dead Woman 


97 


ciple, I would not say it is wrong. She would 
weed out all but her real friends ; and her life, 
if less varied, might become more real, and cer¬ 
tainly more intense. Every w*oman has the 
right to be a mother, if she wishes to be 5 but 
there are some women who feel that their 
whole soul revolts against the violation of per¬ 
sonality involved in marrying a man, tying her¬ 
self to him for life, putting herself entirely in 
his power, pretending she will love him for 
ever, promising never to love anybody else, and 
all the rest of it. To bind yourself this way 
is usually either a folly or a crime; a folly if 
you think you can keep your promises, a crime 
if you know you can’t. What after all is such 
a promise worth? I can promise external 
things, to pay a certain sum on a certain day, 
to go to my people next Christmas, and so on. 
When the time comes, I may regret I ever 
made the promise, it may be distasteful to me 
to fulfil it, but it can be done. But with in¬ 
ternal feelings it is different. ‘Who can com¬ 
mand the heart?’ No amount of promising 
can make one soul love another a day longer 
than it otherwise would; indeed the very bond 




Love Letters 


involved may touch a spring in both that defeats 
its own ends—a feeling of compulsion, a breath 
of suspicion, that poisons the air of freedom in 
which alone love can breathe and endure. 
There must be change, in love as in all else. 
No promise can avert that; it can only make us 
feel false and wicked when the inevitable 
change comes.” 

Lockwood did not reply. 

“What I am saying is not new,” I went on. 
“It has been said for two thousand years. 
Campbell expressed it most beautifully when he 
wrote: 

“ ‘Can you keep the bee from ranging, 

Or the ringdove’s neck from changing? 

No! nor fettered love from dying 
In the knot there’s no untying.’ ” 

Lockwood was gazing out of the trees at the 
rain, with a troubled wrinkle on his usually 
smooth brow*. As I listened to the raindrops 
pattering on the leaves above our heads and on 
the earth outside the wood, I realised that his 
was not an idle questioning, but that he was 
worrying out some problem that affected him 
personally and deeply, as deeply at least as his 




To A Dead Woman 


99 


nature would allow. The hurried undertones 
to Enid before we separated on the hill, some¬ 
thing crude in her voice as she announced her 
intention of going home, had aroused in me a 
suspicion that all was not going smoothly be¬ 
tween them; and now I felt sure. Knowing 
Lockwood’s selfishness, and the circles in which 
he mixed, I jumped to the hypothesis that 
though Enid might wish to marry him, he was 
eager to find some means of avoiding it. And 
I almost regretted the answer that I had given 
him; for, little as I believed in marriage, my 
heart went out to Enid directly I imagined 
her in trouble. Lockwood’s next observation, 
however, showed my suspicions to be curiously 
wide of the mark. 

“Funny you should say that; it’s just what 
Enid has been saying to me. All you artistic 
people seem to have the same ideas. So dif¬ 
ferent to what most people think.” 

“I doubt if it’s so different after all,” I 
replied. “The only difference is that, in the 
conventional world, people learn quite easily 
to keep to themselves any thought or desire 
that does not fit in With their social environ- 




IOO 


Love Letters 


ment; whereas we say more freely what we 
think on themes like these. There must be 
thousands of girls in West End drawing-rooms, 
or in bourgeois homes, who are longing with all 
their half-developed souls both for love and 
for freedom, but who are condemned by laws 
and customs, not of their own making, to choose 
between the two.” 

“Enid is just like that,” said Lockwood, 
turning to me. “Only she says she means to 
have both.” 

I thought of the words, “It must needs be 
that offences come ; but woe to that man by 
whom the offence cometh.” 

“There’s the risk,” I said, after a pause. 

“Yes, I know,” he replied, looking away. 

Neither of us returned to the subject; and 
during the whole of the succeeding weeks, as 
their tragedy unfolded itself, neither he nor 
Enid ever spoke to me of that again. 

The weather showed no signs of clearing, 
and we tramped home side by side under a 
steady rain during the Whole of that dismal 
afternoon. Over the Devil’s Jumps we went, 
and across the marshy stretch that lies between 




To A Dead Woman 


IOI 


the common and the higher ground 5 then, skirt¬ 
ing the water, we turned up the lane at the 
Frensham Pond Hotel, and walked uphill 
with long stride and swinging tread, almost 
in silence j meeting no one on the way except 
an occasional car concealing its inmates under 
a tightly drawn hood, and splashing us with 
mud as We drew aside into the wet green bank 
to let it pass. There was no joy in that walk 
for me, nor, probably, for Lockwood; and yet 
the memory of it is pleasurable now, as I re¬ 
call the winding uphill road, the ravines on 
either side filled with rain-clouds, the dripping 
trees, the wet roofs of the houses as we neared 
the village, the sense of exercise and health 
as I threw off my drenched clothes and lay, 
still flushed and heated, in the long warm bath 
looking at the white ceiling and thinking that 
soon, in a quarter of an hour, you would be 
pouring out my tea. 

“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.” 

After tea you all made me read aloud. We 
sat in the lounge chairs of the little parlour, 
where the rain still beat against the windows, 




102 


Love Letters 


and the rest of you either dreamed or listened 
while I turned over the pages of a Swinburne 
that I had brought with me, and read first 
“The Hymn of Man,” and then “Dolores.” 
Afterwards we dined, and were joined by the 
only other guest, a tall commercial traveller 
in a stiff white collar and pepper-and-salt suit. 
He had very grey hair and a pink, youthful 
face, on which there sat a permanent smile of 
satisfaction, as he noisily consumed his plate 
of roast pork and onion sauce, wiping his mouth 
with a sweeping gesture and sipping a bottle 
of cheap red wine. He was anxious to impress 
upon us that he was an habitue and a friend 
of the host; and broke in upon our conversa¬ 
tion from time to time to expatiate upon the 
glories of the house, as if he were responsible 
for them. 

“You don’t get a wine like this in London, 
eh? not at the price,” he boasted, refilling his 
glass. “Maydoc, see? That’s what it’s called,” 
and he showed us the label. 

“They know me ’ere; I come most week¬ 
ends when I’m in reach. It’s better than 
stewing in London, spending yer money on 




To A Dead Woman 


103 


movies, or music halls, or company that does 
yer no good. ’Ere I am} my place is always 
laid for me, with a clean white serviette and 
a bottle of this same wine. They know my 
tastes without my telling ’em.” 

Or again: “This pork is the best you’ll get 
anywhere around. But in the autumn it’s even 
better} they serve it with chestnuts then, puray 
they call ’em} you know, grated and mashed. 
But the best thing they give is the roast fowl, 
with sausage and mashed potatoes. You’ll 
’ave that to-morrow, sure enough, an’ you’ll 
see if I don’t know what’s what.” 

And: “There ain’t no scenery like this any¬ 
where in England. I’ve seen it all, north, 
south, east, and west, as you may say, being 
on the road this thirty year, up and down in 
the trains and cars an’ dog-carts and traps and 
every old kind of thing. And I say there’s 
nothing to touch this. Views? Why, yer don’t 
know what views are till you’ve been up here. 
And the climate! Cool an’ shady in summer, 
clear an’ crisp in Winter} you should see it with 
the snow on the ground!” 

And then at the end of the meal, when 





104 


Love Letters 


the coffee was served, and we were leaving the 
table: “Stop an 5 ’ave a Gron Marniay with 
me. Now do.” 

You girls refused, charmingly, of course; 
and Lockwood went with you into the next 
room, leaving me to smoke a cigar with this 
man, and drink his favorite liqueur. Brains, 
energy, assurance, a curious love of beauty 
cropping up through a crust of coarseness, and 
above all a vast appreciation of everything and 
everybody, including himself, due to good 
nature, good health, and an entire absence of 
the critical faculty—these and other incongruous 
qualities that I discovered as we talked, con¬ 
stituted the make-up of this remarkable man, 
whom, except on that and the succeeding even¬ 
ing, I never met, but whose personality I shall 
never forget. By a strange whim of the mind, 
the picture of him still flashes before me when¬ 
ever Hindhead is mentioned; and if some 
psychoanalyst were to submit me to a question 
test, I feel sure he would conclude that I knew 
him intimately in earliest childhood, instead of 
having met him for two or three hours only, 
at the age of thirty-one. 





To A Dead Woman 


10 5 


All that day I had seen but little of you— 
we hardly exchanged two words alone 3 and 
it was not till the Sunday that we came together 
and held the hours of loving converse in the 
sunshine for which the whole week-end had 
really been planned. For the rain had van¬ 
ished with the darkness, and we were able to 
walk and wander in the heather through the 
whole of a glorious summer day. We two 
drifted away from the others 3 and lying on the 
ground, our heads in the shadow* of a giant 
gorse-bush, with the hot sun beating on our 
bodies, we breathed awhile the atmosphere of 
stimulus and rest, of mental energy and moral 
peace that never failed to swathe us when we 
were alone, and that I have never felt except 
alone with you. We lay on our backs on my 
mackintosh—for the ground was still wet— 
and watched the bees alight on the golden 
flowers above our heads, little dark balls against 
the sky, propelled by shimmering wings in¬ 
visible. In constant stream they came and went, 
busy, almost fussy, with the purpose of their 
coming 3 while now and then the lazy flapping 
of the butterflies, fewer and far between, 




io 6 


Love Letters 


seemed to tell us that life is not all toil, but 
that there, among the heather and the gorse 
flowers, Nature called to dalliance and to love. 
And the hot sun beat down upon our bodies; 
the silence was heavy with the sounds of sum¬ 
mer ; little clouds streamed by above us against 
the impenetrable blue. 

It was then that you told me about Enid, 
and I found the meaning of Lockwood’s ques¬ 
tions of the day before. Turning on to your 
side and picking the heather with your fingers, 
you unfolded in a few short sentences all the 
panic of her frightened soul. She and Lock- 
wood had been lovers; she had taken the great 
risk with her eyes open; and now it was too 
late to turn back. 

“Enid is a fine girl, really.” You sprang 
like a mother to her defence. “Very fine and 
very brave; but in some ways so weak. We 
have aften talked of the meaning of Life to¬ 
gether; we both believe that we women are 
intended to be mothers, that our bodies are 
meant to create, and our breasts to give suck. 
But is is such a sacred thing that I cannot un¬ 
derstand her doing it so lightly. She must 




To A Dead Woman 


107 


have been mad. I knew she was keen on him; 
but though I asked her closely, I never thought 
she would go so far, so soon—and with him.” 

You paused and shivered. 

I asked the obvious question: “Is he going 
to marry her?” 

“Perhaps he would,” was your reply. “I 
don’t know. But she never meant that, and 
cannot bring herself to it. She knows that 
it would be a ghastly failure. I don’t think 
she loves him that way at all.” 

“What on earth did they do it for?” I asked, 
after a pause. 

“Who can tell? The reasoning of a mo¬ 
ment of ecstasy will not always bear the cold 
light of time. Enid takes the whole blame 
upon herself. She says she knew quite well 
what she was doing, and she never intended 
to marry him. She thought, somehow, that she 
would go through with it, and face the world 
with a child. But now she’s frightened; and 
last night she came to my room and told me 
so. First she was hard and bitter, and then 
after a while she collapsed. She remained in 




io8 


Love Letters 


my bedroom for hours, clinging on to me like 
a child, and asking me what she was to do.” 

“What advice did you give?” I turned and 
looked into your face. 

“What advice should I have given?” You 
looked straight back into my eyes. 

“She must either marry Lockwood, or face 
the world with an illegitimate child. I don’t 
know which is the worse fate.” 

“There is a third course,” you said, still 
looking hard at me. 

“No,” I said loudly, harshly. “That’s im¬ 
possible. No, not that, whatever happens.” 

“Why not?” you asked in the same quiet 
voice. 

I did not answer for a moment, and looked 
away. 

“I want to know why not,” you repeated. 

“Because it’s horrible,” I said angrily, still 
averting my gaze. 

You put your hand against my cheek and 
turned my face around till our eyes met again. 

“Is it more horrible than being tied for life 
to a man you will cease to love, and who does 
not really love you? Or is it more horrible 




To A Dead Woman 


109 


than bringing into the world a baby that you 
cannot afford to keep, and that all the world 
will treat as a pariah, making its life a long 
misery, destroying its illusions, warping its 
character year by year as it grows up?” 

Again I did not answer. 

“It’s the world that’s horrible, the world as 
it is, with its man-made laws, its traps for the 
adventurous, its ruthless punishment for the 
weak. Enid is fine, really, and she has only 
done what Nature called her to do; and now 
there is no future for her that is not horrible. 
Or if there is one, tell me what it is. What 
would you advise, you who condemn so 
lightly?” 

“Anything but that,” I answered evasively. 
“Surely you did not advise that?” 

“You cannot answer, and you throw the onus 
of reply on me. How like a man!” and you 
laughed a little and took my hand. “No, dear, 
I did not advise that. I told her she had better 
marry Lockwood. You see she has made a 
big mistake, and she has got to pay for it 
somehow. If she were really big and strong 
I would bid her face the world as a pioneer of 




no 


Love Letters 


freedom. But she is not that kind. She’s fine, 
but she’s not big enough for that. She would 
crumple up, and her babe with her. And as 
for the third course, I feel just as you do. It’s 
horrible, and out of the question. One cannot 
reason about it; it’s just impossible, like brawl¬ 
ing in church, or trampling on a flower.” 

Again I broke the long silence that ensued. 

“So she will marry Lockwood. What a 
prospect!” And I knocked the gorse-bush 
viciously with my stick. 

“I don’t know what she’ll do. I shan’t try 
to influence her at all; but as she asked my 
advice, that was what seemed to me to be the 
best, on the whole. She replied that she would 
not sell her life to him or to any one else; 
and she left me with a hard, defiant look in 
her face. Oh, Ronnie dear, she’s awfully 
unhappy!” 

“If there is anything that I can do-” I 

began, but you interrupted. 

“She alone can decide. Her fate is in her 
own hands now. We can do nothing but re¬ 
main her friends, whatever she does.” And 





To A Dead Woman 


hi 


after an interval you repeated, “Whatever she 
does.” 

We had all arranged to meet for tea at the 
Frensham Pond Hotel; but as we approached 
it we almost regretted our decision. Nearly 
a dozen cars were lined up on the road; at 
the little tables on the verandah a crowd of 
smartly dressed people were refreshing them¬ 
selves, and watching the boats disgorge their 
occupants at the landing-stage—men in white 
flannels and white shoes, women in sun-hats and 
coloured parasols. We, and especially you and 
Enid, felt hopelessly underdressed in our walk¬ 
ing costumes and muddy boots. When you 
went indoors to tidy up, you returned with 
tales of heavy pile carpets underneath your 
feet, and pretty women who looked askance 
at you as they powdered their faces before the 
mirror. But the tea, daintily served with jam 
and little cakes, put us back into better tempers, 
even though it smacked more of Bond Street 
than of a country inn; and we sat there, watch¬ 
ing the people mount their cars one by one for 
the return run to London, until, besides the 
flannelled residents of the hotel, only two other 




112 


Love Letters 


parties were left, who had apparently deter¬ 
mined to dine there before returning. Then 
we, too, paid our reckoning, and walked home¬ 
ward up the hill in the declining light; all 
from our different angles thinking out the same 
problem—Enid’s problem. And to me that 
evening our sayings and doings seemed to pass 
as in a dream 5 our voices were distant and 
unreal, unreal too even the loudly-expressed 
triumph of our commercial friend when the 
maid fulfilled his prophecy and brought us 
fowl and sausage and mashed potatoes. There 
was only one reality—the suffering of Enid; 
the bitter tang in her voice, the hunted look 
upon her face. 




VI 


1 Thursday afternoon . 

D EAREST,— ... The walk after lunch 
to-day was wonderful. White was the 
countryside, the path untrodden; and the snow 
that had hardly finished falling lay delicate 
and undisturbed in soft round ledges on fence 
and gate, on roof and branch. At the stile I 
was loath to be the first to crush its feathery 
whiteness, and turned aside through the gate 
into the churchyard. The door of the church 
stood open, and I went inside. Old, dating 
from the fourteenth century, with traces of 
a still older Norman building in the tower, 
it has been faithfully restored, probably in the 
lifetime of many of the inhabitants. The 
stone of the Gothic windows has been renewed; 
the columns of the nave have lost their mystery; 
the tablets on the walls are bright and modern, 
burnished brass with clear-cut lettering, or ro- 

113 


hove betters 


114 

coco marble of florid pattern. Two especially 
struck me with their naive ugliness, a bas-relief 
of a nineteenth-century gentleman with chop- 
whiskers, and a cavalry officer in the full 
uniform of the Georgian period. New oak 
pews, a new rood-screen, and a new organ com¬ 
plete the picture of modern prosperity \ the 
Norman font, the tomb of the Crusader in 
the south aisle, and some glass in one chancel 
window are the only remaining relics of the 
old atmosphere, grey-coloured by the wear 
of time. 

I can divine the village of Woodstone at a 
glance, its prosperity, its charity, its up-to- 
dateness. Here, I feel sure, there are no sick 
poor that are not looked after by the vicar and 
his wealthy friends. The cottages are new 
and roomy. The cricket and football clubs are 
the best in the neighbourhood, and the Squire’s 
sons lead the teams into the field. The flower 
show is quite an event, and is patronised by all 
the motor-car folk for miles around. The 
children get their Christmas tree in the school¬ 
room and their summer fete in the park. 
Although the framewcrk of village life is the 




To A Dead Woman 


ii 5 


same here as elsewhere, behind it there is money 
—the money of rich and charitable families, 
your husband perhaps among the number. I 
expect you have given away the prizes to the 
children, and taken soup to the sick with your 
own hands 5 and many will bless your name, 
and lament your going. I love to think of 
you giving pleasure and radiating your good¬ 
ness among your neighbours. But I ask myself, 
when I see a village like this, whether it is 
not blacklegging the others—those thousands 
of villages where there is one landowner, poor 
or careless or absent; where the underpaid 
workers on the land live in damp hovels that 
let the weather in, without fireplaces and with¬ 
out water, and have no one to comfort them in 
their sickness; where the church is always in 
debt, and the vicar, good man or miserable, 
struggles on his lonely way; where the doctor 
is incompetent and the farmers are hard and 
mean; where the only hope in the hearts of 
the children is to get into the town or to go 
for a soldier. Yes, dear, your village is one of 
the lucky ones. I wonder if there are many 
such; I wonder whether the revival of the 




Love Letters 


116 


English country-side can come this way, by 
gradually making all the villages happy and 
prosperous from above on charitable lines, or 
whether the future will not rather be built up 
from below, by the welding together of the 
rural workers themselves, and by the elimin¬ 
ation of all dependence on the Squire and the 
Church. If so, dear, your village is a black¬ 
leg, and all its charity but an impediment in 
the path. 

My face is still tingling with the cold nip 
of the snow-laden air. When I came in, I 
changed my boots in front of a roaring fire— 
Flora is really a past master in the art of fire¬ 
building—and began this letter without waiting 
for her to bring the tea; for there is so much 
to write, and Enid’s story is still but half told. 
As I resume it, I remember more clearly the 
times and seasons. I was wrong in my last 
letter when I put the date of our Hindhead 
expedition as early as June; it must have been 
a month later, towards the end of July; be¬ 
cause, you remember, the summer holidays 
began directly afterwards. We had not been 
back in town long when Lockwood went fishing 




To A Dead Woman 


117 


in Wales, and you went to your aunt in Scot¬ 
land. And just before you went we had our 
first and last quarrel, the only serious difference 
that ever disturbed our friendship. It came 
so suddenly and was over so soon that it hardly 
mattered really. But it was a quarrel, never¬ 
theless ; for we both lost our self-control, and 
there was anger in our hearts. 

You had arranged to go north on the last 
Saturday in July, and you promised to dine 
and dance with me on the Thursday evening 
before you went. It was the first time since 
our meeting that we were parted for any length 
of time; a couple of days here and there when 
you went to sing at some concert in the pro¬ 
vinces, and a tour of one week in the spring 
had been your only absences from town. But 
now you were going to be away for a month $ 
for four long mortal weeks was I condemned 
to spend my evenings in London alone, and 
to work in chambers without the prospect of 
meeting you at the end of the day. I could 
not get away myself, because there is no Long 
Vacation at the Criminal Bar; the work of the 
police courts and the Sessions goes on without 




118 


Love Letters 


a break all the year through; and is is while 
the elder men are away for their summer 
holiday that a young man sometimes gets his 
chance. 

What made it seem worse was that during 
the fortnight preceeding your departure we had 
been even more together than usual. I was not 
quite as busy 5 and, the season being over, your 
engagements had ceased. So you called for me 
at the Temple nearly every afternoon at six, 
and we made a series of evening excursions, re¬ 
turning home together, tired and happy, in the 
cool of the summer night. At first we had 
merely walked to the West End, and home 
through the parks after dinner. Then we be¬ 
gan exploring before our meal. Once we 
walked eastwards through the City past St. 
Paul’s, which rose gigantic and mysterious like 
a fairy palace in the coloured rays of the misty 
sun. It amused you to see the City shops and 
offices, closed as on Sunday, but with the steady 
stream of clerks and typists hurrying home on 
foot or waiting in groups, with little parcels, 
at the corners where the buses stop. Opposite 
the Mansion House, instead of the usual block 




To A Dead Woman 


119 


of vehicles and monster buses that hide the 
view, we could see right down the streets that 
stretched in all directions like the limbs of a 
starfish, getting quickly narrower as they left 
the Bank, until the houses converged and their 
future course was lost to sight. We joined 
a group of work-girls there, and jumped upon 
a vehicle that took us all the way to the London 
Docks. At first we were crowded at the top 
into a back seat; but at Aldgate many of the 
occupants descended, and we moved to the 
front. Driving eastwards at that time of the 
evening was like emerging from a suburb into 
the business quarter. The City streets were 
dead, but at Aldgate Pump London burst 
again into full life; the shops were all open; 
there were booths and barrows in the road; 
carts and vans were moving in all directions, 
with small boys kicking their legs behind, and 
larking with other small boys as they passed; 
foreigners, mostly Jews with black hair and 
olive skins, were hurrying in and out of open 
doors, or stopping to greet one another with 
a laugh or a handshake outside the taverns 
and eating-houses. Down through Stepney 




120 


Love Letters 


we went, noticing the Hebrew names above 
the doors and the placards in Yiddish char¬ 
acters upon the walls ; but here, though the 
shops were open, they were fewer, and life 
grew sleepier. Another little burst of activity 
awaited us at Limehouse Church; but, beyond, 
the streets again looked long and empty, and 
I suggested we should descend. 

“We’ll dive in here and get to the river,” 
I said. “It’s worth seeing by this light.” 

So we skirted the churchyard and threaded 
our way through narrow thoroughfares and 
past dirty little courts that opened under arch¬ 
ways, leaving to the right thin lines of long, 
low-built houses where the Limehouse dockers 
dwell with their large families, and where 
every street is a slum. 

“It looks quite quiet and decent,” you said. 

“It’s a dead end, this three-cornered bit be¬ 
tween the main road and the water,” I replied. 
“There’s nothing quite like it in the rest of 
London. They are nearly all unskilled workers 
here; the better class have moved across the 
iron bridge to Canning Town, leaving the 
standard of life here exceptionally low. Oc- 




To A Dead Woman 


121 


casionally one sees a glimpse of better things 
—look at those sunflowers growing in that 
little yard there, lifting their heads above the 
paling ; or there, in that window opposite, the 
curtains clean and tied up with fresh blue rib¬ 
bon. These are the new-comers; some young 
labourer has married a girl from the country, 
and she has not yet lost her courage and her 
sense of beauty. She whitens her window-sill 
and polishes the disused bell-pull. Wait till 
she has had two or three children and her hus¬ 
band has been out of work for a winter or two! 
There’ll be no polishing then, and the curtains 
will be dingy and draggled; she will be thin 
and gaunt, with big rings under her eyes; the 
children will have nits in their hair, and her 
husband, as likely as not, will be drinking and 
not bringing all his money home; some of 
what he brings she will spend on gin to ease 
the pains that will gnaw her, month after 
month, as the result of strain and overwork. 
Then they will be fined for not sending their 
children to school regularly, when they have 
no shoes to go in, and the weather is wet, and 
they are half stupid with coughs and rickets. 




122 


Love Letters 


But these children will grow up somehow and 
breed like rabbits, making miserable, underfed 
children in their turn 3 and the community, 
that does not raise a finger to prevent it, will 
spend no end of money in trying to cure the 
results of it all. They will get out-of-work 
pay when they are unemployed, which will be 
all they are fit for3 the local authorities will 
give the brats a little milk in spurts, when it 
occurs to them 3 the medical authorities will 
examine their eyes, and patch up their ruined 
teeth, and disinfect them at the public expense 
when they are the victims of epidemic disease 3 
one out of every three or four will be con¬ 
sumptive, or epileptic, or the inmate of a public 
lunatic asylum 3 and most of them will spend 
their last days in the workhouse and be buried 
by the ratepayers. And in the third generation 
they will die out, and a stream of immigrants 
from the country will pour in to take their 
place, and follow in their footsteps to the same 
inevitable end.” 

“It isn’t really as bad as that,” you protested. 
“Surely the proportion of failure and misery 
is not so high?” 




To A Dead Woman 


123 


“Not in the population as a whole, of course,” 
I answered. “But here, yes. For here you 
have the unskilled labourers segregated as a 
community, and not merging with the rest as 
usually happens. Here, therefore, you can 
really study the problem of poverty in all its 
bearings, and realise the poison that infects us 
from below, the marsh on which our civilisation 
is built. The whole community does not 
experience this misery; but the whole com¬ 
munity is endangered by it. It is there in 
every town, in every village. The wealth at 
the top of the scale is accumulated by the sweat¬ 
ing and degradation of people like these 5 and 
they get their unconscious revenge by infecting 
the world in which the wealthy have to live. 
For if a Rothschild dies of diphtheria or con¬ 
sumption, it is from here that the poison springs 5 
and if young Lord So-and-so is rotten with 
venereal disease, it is only because the women 
of this class are driven to prostitution by want, 
and pollute with their dirt and degradation the 
very channels of love.” 

“It’s terrible,” you said5 and we walked in 
silence until suddenly turning round the cor- 




124 


Love Letters 


ner of a house we came upon the water. The 
glow of sunset threw into strong relief the low 
horizon of the opposite bank, whose jagged 
edge of dark roofs and chimneys lay like a 
belt between the golden sky itself and its 
reflection in the water. The picture was cut 
into sections by thin lines of masts that rose 
at different angles out of the river and stretched 
upward to the sky; and the whole was wrapped 
in the intangible mists of a London evening, 
smoke-brown and orange and pale, pale blue. 

“How like Whistler!” you exclaimed. 

“It would be truer to say that Whistler was 
like this,” I corrected, laughing. 

“No, dear, that’s where you are wrong. It 
is because of Whistler, or rather, because of 
painters like Whistler, for he was not the first, 
that we can see this as we see it now. The 
world is there before us all, in its multiple 
variety, and we hardly notice it until some 
one comes along and calls our attention to this 
or that aspect of its beauty. Artists do not 
create the beauty, but they have the vision to 
see it, and the art to communicate that vision 
to others.” 




To A Dead Woman 


12 5 


I ought to have remembered that remark 
of yours when I wrote about scenery this morn¬ 
ing. Perhaps the real reason why the ancients 
did not appreciate scenery was that there were 
no painters of scenery in those days. Such 
remains of painting as have come down to us 
in Egyptian tombs, on Attic vases, in Roman 
mosaics, and the like, deal mainly with forms, 
the lines of the human body and of animals 
and flowers. Scenery crept into art edgeways, 
in the glorious Italian backgrounds of a Cruci¬ 
fixion or a Nativity; it was only later that it 
revelled for its own sake, as on the canvas 
of a Turner or a Claude. 

Returning home from those jaunts into the 
byways of London, the charm of the sunset 
hour threw its magic over our friendship and 
drew us nearer together day by day. We 
forgot the noise of the engine, and the rattle 
of the unwieldy motor vehicle; we forgot the 
hardness of the seat, the grim ugliness of the 
buildings on either side, the jarring voices and 
Cockney twang of the people all around us. 
We just held hands in silence, or spoke in an 
undertone; our eyes faced westwards and we 




126 


Love Letters 


looked straight into the red-gold sky, turning 
our heads as we passed down Oxford Street 
to probe the mystery of the cold grey roads to 
the north, to see whether they led to some 
mysterious green square of sleepy trees, or to 
a fairy spire, gilded by the declining sun. The 
London roofs took on their share of heaven’s 
glory ; the shop signs and giant lettering of 
metal answered the sunset in its own language 
from the balconies; and I looked at the outline 
of your face beside me and saw a more than 
human beauty there. And I loved you, dear, 
so purely, so serenely, as little children love in 
the field or in the forest; as you loved always, 
having the soul of a child. 

But on the Thursday before your holiday 
we had planned another sort of evening. We 
would don our evening dress, dine at a smart 
restaurant, and go on to a dance. I left cham¬ 
bers early and went to buy some things I needed 
in Piccadilly and Bond Street before the shops 
shut. And it was then that I yielded to a 
temptation that had been growing upon me 
for some time past. In the window of a Bond 
Street shop I saw a jade necklace, and pictured 




To A Dead Woman 


127 


it on you 5 I had never given you anything of 
great value; only a box of chocolates from 
time to time, or some flowers, or an occasional 
book. Something told me you would not like 
me to do so; you laid no store by such things, 
nor did you measure a gift from me by its 
intrinsic worth. But that evening I remem¬ 
bered you had no jewellery, or wore none. 
I realised how wonderfully the green of jade 
would heighten the beauty of your blue, blue 
eyes and of your dark, dark hair. What a 
surprise it would be for that night’s dance and 
dinner! Without a further thought I went 
into the shop and asked the price. It cost 
much more than I could pay out of the money 
in my pocket, and they did not know me; but 
by this time I was bent on your having it that 
night, and told them that otherwise I should 
not buy it at all. Eventually I took a taxi 
and got them £5 from each of my two clubs; 
and they took my cheque for the rest and prom¬ 
ised to deliver it at your flat within half an 
hour. Then I went home to dress, and met 
you at the restaurant at the appointed time. 

Two cocktails were waiting in the lounge 




128 


Love Letters 


when you appeared, a little late, and looking 
rather tired 3 and without the necklace. How¬ 
ever, I said nothing; and after the cocktails 
we went in. 

The dinner was a failure from begining to 
end. Not all the brilliant lighting and lux¬ 
urious upholstery could save it from disaster. 
The people were banal and uninteresting, as 
people at smart restaurants nearly always are. 
The band, playing the musical comedy tunes, 
got on our nerves. It was not our atmosphere; 
we were more at home in some corner in Soho. 
Perhaps I was tired; perhaps you were not 
well; undoubtedly the long London season 
had told upon you, and your holiday was al¬ 
ready overdue. Perhaps you, too, felt the 
impending parting more than you cared to 
show. And I was frankly worried about the 
necklace. 

At last, towards the end of a dinner that 
neither of us had really enjoyed, and en¬ 
couraged by the lack of any other topic of 
conversation, I asked you point blank whether 
you had received it. 

“Yes, dear. I have brought it with me. It’s 




To A Dead Woman 


129 


in the cloakroom. It’s very sweet of you to 
want to give it me, but I can’t accept it.” 

I tried expostulation. I tried flattery. I 
tried indignation. I showed that I was hurt. 
But you were firm. 

“You know I don’t like valuable things. I 
am a simple person and I never wear 
jewellery.” 

“But it’s only jade,” I said. “And it would 
look so wonderful against your hair.” 

“It’s no use, Ronnie. I don’t want it—and 
especially from you. If you begin doing that, 
it will spoil everything between us.” 

Then at last I got angry. If our friend¬ 
ship was going to be spoiled by a bit of jade, 
it couldn’t be worth much. If I could not 
give you a necklace, who could! I called for 
the bill, and paid it in a temper. We left in 
an atmosphere of tension. 

As we went through the door to the taxi, 
you produced the little parcel from under your 
cloak, and handed it to me. I stopped on the 
pavement. 

“Do you mean this?” I said. 

“Yes, dear, I am in earnest.” 





130 


Love Letters 


“You won’t take it, even if I ask you again?” 
I spoke in a tone of ultimatum. 

“No, I really can’t.” 

“Very well, then,” I said melodramatically. 
And we got into the taxi. 

“Tell the man to drive to Westminster 
Bridge,” I said, as I slipped a tip into the hand 
of the porter. He looked surprised. 

The night was warm and the taxi was open. 
We drove in silence through the brilliant 
lights of Piccadilly and turned into the com¬ 
parative dimness of Waterloo Place. 

“Why did you tell him Westminster Bridge, 
Ronnie?” 

“You will see.” And we drove on in silence. 

Down Whitehall, to the left under the tower 
of Big Ben. The dial showed live minutes to 
ten exactly. There was a light in the lantern 
above the main building. Parliament was 
sitting. 

We began to cross the bridge. When we 
were about half-way, I stood up in the cab, 
and flung the parcel with all my force over 
the parapet into the river. Then I bent round 




To A Dead Woman 


I3i 

the window and told the chauffeur to drive 
back to the dance. 

“No, dear,” you said quickly. “Tell him 
to drive me home.” 

“You won’t come and dance, then?” I asked 
angrily. 

“No y I am going home.” Then after a 
pause, “How could you, Ronnie? The money 
you spent on that would have kept one of those 
Limehouse families for six months. It’s 
wicked!” 

“If you throw my present back in my face, 
I can throw it into the water, can’t I? I don’t 
want the damned thing. It’s no use to me.” 

You did not answer. The Houses of Par¬ 
liament, with lights in some of the windows, 
raised their massive pile in stately outline 
against the star-spread sky. I remember think¬ 
ing at the moment that, seen like that from the 
bridge at night, it was the most beautiful 
building in the world. 

At the end of Whitehall I directed the taxi 
down Victoria Street, and nursed my temper 
in silence till we stopped at your door. 

“Good-night,” you said. 




132 


Love Letters 


As you paused to fit the latchkey in the 
door, the light of the street lamp fell upon your 
face, and I saw that you were crying. And 
suddenly I relented ; there burst upon me the 
whole folly and childishness of what I had 
done. Just as the door yielded to your key, 
I stepped forward and touched your arm. 

“Pm sorry, dear. So sorry. Won’t you 
kiss me good-night?” 

I bent towards you, but you put your hand 
out to stop me. 

“Good-night,” you said, and disappeared 
through the door. 

“Say you forgive me. Let me come in for 
a moment,” I stammered. 

But the door closed behind you, and I was 
left alone on the pavement. 

I drove back; and near Piccadilly Circus I 
got out. How long I walked, threading my 
way among the pimps and prostitutes and 
loafers that throng that quarter between nine 
and one, I do not exactly know. All I remem¬ 
ber is that I continued walking up and down 
the same brilliant streets, retracing my steps 
to Piccadilly Circus whenever I found myself 




To A Dead Woman 


133 


getting beyond the lights and the crowd. Up 
Shaftesbury Avenue, down Charing Cross Road, 
round Coventry Street; up Regent Street, down 
Vigo Street, and back by Bond Street and 
Piccadilly; meeting the same faces time after 
time, of painted women who looked eagerly 
into mine in the hope that I should choose 
them, and so bring their long nocturnal pil¬ 
grimage to an end at the long last. 

And all the time I was thinking feverishly 
of you: of our first meeting, of our first kiss, 
of the day when I drove to your street in the 
luncheon hour and did not find you, of our 
Sunday in the heather, of our evening walks 
on these same London pavements. I won¬ 
dered what life would be for me without you 3 
and I planned in my heart to bring our love 
to an issue, and to take you for my own. What 
mattered money, after all, and our theories 
of marriage and freedom? I longed to live with 
you, always and all the time; to feel you near 
me at the moment of my uprising and of my 
lying down, to clothe my life in your atmos¬ 
phere, to lose myself in you. What a waste 
of time and tissue the long days lived without 




134 


Love Letters 


you! Instead of to-night’s aimless wandering, 
I should have been nesting with you3 reading, 
talking, making music, instead of pacing the 
pavements all alone. 

There was a moment when the streets became 
almost impassable as the theatres belched their 
contents into the road outside. Then I sought 
refuge in a small oyster-bar close to Piccadilly 
Circus Tube Station, and ordered oysters and 
half a pint of stout. I was tired after my 
long tramp, and it was strangely quiet in the 
little back room filled with small tables, only 
two of which were occupied. At one of these 
a couple of young people were speaking in an 
undertone 3 he was florid and spotty, and very 
much in love 3 she was of the shop-girl class, 
and seemed rather shy. At another table a 
large man, with a dark moustache and a dark 
overcoat, sat eating oysters by himself, looking 
straight in front of him the while. I could 
hear the click of his lips as they moved. I 
sat there for some time, the events of the night 
going round and round in my brain. 

On leaving I directed my steps to my club. 
It was no good letting our quarrel fester I 




To A Dead Woman 


135 


would write to you and ask your forgiveness. 
We would meet again on the morrow evening, 
your last evening, almost as if nothing had 
happened. But the letter would not be easy 
to write, and its exact form was not settled in 
my mind when I arrived at the club door. 
So I walked by, along the pavement, only to 
turn round again and continue my wandering. 
The streets were emptier now; most of the 
theatre crowd had gone home, or were still 
indoors at supper; there were fewer aimless 
loafers; only the women seemed more active 
on their anxious way. Two or three of them 
spoke to me; and partly to avoid them, partly 
because I was tired and ill at ease, I turned 
into my club at last to write my letter. 

The hall was only dimly lighted, for it was 
after midnight; in the main room the large 
soft leather lounge chairs stood in empty dis¬ 
array as they had been left by groups of mem¬ 
bers not long departed. Only in one corner, 
under a shaded lamp, three men in evening 
dress were arguing eternally over whiskies 
many times renewed. One of them I knew 
by sight; a Member of Parliament, still ar- 




Love Letters 


136 

guing the question that was coming to the 
fore, and which the House had been discussing 
that very evening under the lantern, as we 
passed. 

“Women are not meant by nature for active 
work. You can tell that by merely looking 
at them. When do men look their best? How 
do artists paint them? Standing up naked 
with their muscles in action. When do women 
look their best? Lying down. It is in a re¬ 
cumbent position that artists more often paint 
women, because they are more beautiful that 
way. They are only meant for that; you can 
see it by the curve of their bodies. . . .” 

He was lolling back on the sofa with his 
shirt-front a little crumpled. His face was 
flushed and red; his neck was pushed into a 
fold above his collar. I wondered what he 
would look like standing naked; whether you 
would see any muscles beneath the accumulation 
of whisky-sodden flesh. And I thought of 
you, straight and lithe, walking in your short 
tweed skirt across the heather of Hindhead. 

I wrote my letter, posted it in the hall, 
and walked homewards. By this time the 




To A Dead Woman 


137 


streets were almost deserted; even the women 
had all gone home, their places taken by a few 
desolate remnants of humanity who had wan¬ 
dered eastwards from the Park when the gates 
were closed, and who lay in wait under the 
dark doorways and round the corners of the 
side streets. If there were any temptation in 
the neatly clad forms that walk the pavements 
of the West End from dusk till midnight, 
the thought of these sodden parodies of women 
who take their places in the small hours of 
the morning should give the wildest pause. 
And yet, O best beloved of all the world, they 
were of the same stuff as you, speaking the 
same language, bred in the same town at the 
same time. I turned from them in horror, 
and longed for you all the more. 

Next day you ’phoned that you would not 
come out. You were very tired, and had your 
packing to do; you wished to go to bed early 
before your journey north. I might come 
round for a few minutes between tea and din¬ 
ner to say good-bye. Returning home after 
this short interview of forgiveness and fare¬ 
well, an idea struck me which took shape in 




138 


Love Letters 


the night, and which I put into practice in 
the morning. It was Saturday, and things 
were slow in chambers 3 so I rang up Doyle 
and obtained his consent, given grudgingly, of 
course, to my absence. Then I drove to the 
station and booked a ticket for some town in 
the Midlands—I forget which—jumped into 
the rear end of your train, and waited for its 
departure. When at last it started, I walked 
down the corridor looking into all the compart¬ 
ments as I passed, until I found you, seated 
back to the engine, dressed in a little blue 
tailor-made, and buried in a book. There was 
an empty place next yours. You uttered a 
little cry of surprise as I approached. But I 
sat down beside you and spoke in your ear. 

“I wanted just to pass these first three hours 
with you. We can anyhow lunch together. I 
can get out directly afterwards and go back by 
the next train.” 

You were pleased, even more pleased than 
I expected 3 you took my hand and held it long 
in yours. 

“What an extravagrant boy you are these 
days!” you said, smiling. “First that dinner3 




To A Dead Woman 


139 


then the necklace5 and now this journey all 
for nothing.” 

I knew then that I was quite forgiven, and 
that we were very near to one another. 

“I shan’t see you for so long,” I said. 

And you replied, “You must be sensible, 
then, when I come back.” 

I pressed your hand and looked away, out 
of the window at the scurrying fields. And 
the telegraph wires dipped and rose and dip¬ 
ped again j and the rumble of the wheels upon 
the railroad moaned and repeated, “When I 
come back, when I come back.” 

Your return came sooner than we expected. 
You had intended to be away a month j and 
to avoid the loneliness of London I had ar¬ 
ranged to run down the line every evening to 
Northwood to dine and sleep at a cottage 
recommended by a friend who had been there 
earlier in the summer. It belonged to a young 
solicitor named Robson, I remember, who had 
temporarily fallen on bad times. His only 
child had had an expensive illness and had 
been removed to a home; the mother was 
courageously facing a deficit in the family bud- 




140 


Love Letters 


get by turning the little nursery into a spare 
room and taking a paying guest. The journey 
from Marylebone or Baker Street was under 
half an hour, with less than half a mile to 
walk at the other end; and I soon found that 
sleeping in the country air more than com¬ 
pensated me for the extra fatigue of the journey 
night and morning. When, the following 
spring, I heard that the Robsons were getting 
rid of the cottage altogether, I took it off their 
hands for three years, furnished, and subse¬ 
quently spent much of my time there, especially 
in the summer. 

During my first visit to Northwood, while 
the idea of dining in the country was quite 
new, I was always impatient to get away from 
chambers as early as possible $ and work being 
comparatively slack, Doyle raised no objection. 
As soon as five o’clock struck I would take my 
hat and stick, bounce through his office with a 
cheery “good-night,” and, hurrying to Temple 
Bar, jump on the top of a Strand bus, diving 
underground into the Bakerloo at Trafalger 
Square. Less than twenty minutes from the 
time I left chambers would see me in a third- 




To A Dead Woman 


141 


class carriage with six, seven, or eight other 
black-coated men, moving out of London to 
the north as happy as a child with a new toy. 

And the journeys, short as they were, gave 
ample time for reading. I never realised till 
then how much time men waste on newspapers. 
Most of my fellow-travellers read them from 
beginning to end. This habit accounts largely 
for the degradation of our literary style and 
the weakening of our individual judgment. 
Scribbled hurriedly, and put together cleverly 
by half-educated men for a few pounds a 
week, they become the mental food of millions 
who travel in and out of London daily to 
their offices and to their desks 3 many of whom, 
though far superior both in knowledge and 
education to the average Fleet Street journal¬ 
ist, regard the writings of the latter with an 
almost superstitious awe, and repeat with ap¬ 
proval and importance the phrases and tags of 
thought that they have seen in print. 

In this connection I remember a day when 
all the journals belonging to a certain syndicate 
compared the then Prime Minister to Pitt. “A 
second Pitt,” “a twentieth-century Pitt,” the 




142 


Love Letters 


phrase cropped up again and again. I heard 
it used more than once at lunch 5 and in the 
evening I found myself dining next to a well- 
known M.P., since made a Baronet for his serv¬ 
ices. We talked politics, of course, and he 
used the same phrase to clinch an argument. 

“He has acted just as Pitt acted in similar 
circumstances; you can’t deny that.” 

“Which Pitt?” I asked. 

But he had to pass the salt to his neighbour 
on the other side, and forgot to return to the 
subject. 

It soon became easy to me to know the types, 
and to judge the characters of my fellow- 
travellers by what they read. There was the 
man who buried himself first thing in the 
morning in the Financial Limes. He had 
strained features, and a nervous twitch of the 
mouth and eyes. Others were not so far down 
the hill; they bought an ordinary newspaper, 
but looked at the financial column first. There 
was the keen-faced, well-dressed young man 
who found his intelligence stimulated by the 
Daily Express; his neighbour, twice his age, 
derived a more solid satisfaction from the Daily 




To A Dead Woman 


143 


Telegraph or the Daily News. The Times 
was not yet a penny, so it was rarely seen in 
my third-class carriage 5 the Morning Post was 
sometimes carried by a lady going up early for 
a long day’s shopping. 

It was my habit to scan my paper at break¬ 
fast, so I was almost alone in the practice of 
reading a book in the train. Though I confess 
to spending ten minutes of my return journey 
over an evening paper, yet even so I reckoned 
that I could put in daily three-quarters of an 
hour of some solid reading that was more worth 
while than a newspaper; and during the four 
years that I lived at North wood I got through 
most of the current literature of the period on 
my journey, and not a few classic masterpieces 
as well. Not only do I owe to that oft-re¬ 
peated journey my first appreciation of H. G. 
Wells and Joseph Conrad; but I made acquain¬ 
tance with such widely different works as the 
lives of Benvenuto Cellini and of Wagner, the 
novels of Peacock, of Zola, and of Tolstoi, 
Lecky’s History of Rationalism , Prescott’s 
Conquest of Mexico y The Faerie Queen of 
Spenser, and Browning’s Ring and the Book; 




144 


Love Letters 


all of them books that I should never otherwise 
have had the time or the courage to begin. 

I remember once staying at the house of an 
ex-Cabinet Minister, whose wife was one of 
the last of the great ladies of the Victorian 
epoch. I was quite young at the time, and 
she took a motherly, nay, a grandmotherly, 
interest in me. We talked a great deal of 
books together 5 and one afternoon she took me 
up to her bedroom and pointed to a large book¬ 
case with glass doors, behind which, in beauti¬ 
ful bindings, were arranged most of the great 
classics of the language. 

“I allow my maid a quarter of an hour every 
morning and every evening to brush my hair. 
During that time I read aloud to her. We 
only read the best books, the great books. In 
the last twenty years or so we have got through 
all those. In fact we are now overflowing into 
the next room. That’s what we are reading at 
the moment,” she added, taking from the 
dressing-table the second volume of Winston 
Churchill’s biography of his father. 

“Would you call that a great book?” I 
asked doubtingly. “I have never read it.” 




To A Dead Woman 


145 


“One of the very best biographies in the 
language,” she said confidently. “We never 
liked Randolph, and we cannot stand Winston.” 
(By “we” she included her husband.) “But 
it is a wonderful book. There is a page in it 
summing up Gladstone’s attitude to the Home 
Rule question that throws more light upon his 
mind than all Morley’s pretentious volumes.” 

But I am wandering very far from the sub¬ 
ject of your premature return. 

You had been gone about a fortnight, and 
had written to me once or twice, telling me how 
much you were enjoying the change, and that 
you hoped to stay even longer than the month 
arranged. Only when you arrived in Scotland, 
and let yourself go, had you realised how tired 
you were, and how much the strain of a year’s 
work in London had taken out of you. 

One afternoon, before August was more than 
half over, I was seated at my table reading up 
a case after lunch and wishing that five o’clock 
would come. My old carpet and wallpaper 
were bathed in sunlight, and everything was 
very still and warm. The deep green of the 
Temple Gardens crept up to my open window 3 




146 


Love Letters 


a thrush was hopping on the lawn a few yards 
off; the reflection of the sun upon the water 
gleamed like burnished silver. Suddenly you 
walked quickly into the room, announced by 
Doyle. You were dressed in the little blue 
travelling suit which you had worn on the jour¬ 
ney north; your face was already burned by the 
weather; but your cheeks looked drawn, and 
your eyes were tired and seemed larger than 
usual. 

“What’s happened? What on earth brings 
you here to-day?” I said, rising. 

You looked round to make sure that Doyle 
had gone. Then you placed your hands upon 
my shoulders, and held your cheek against my 
face. 

“I want your help very, very badly,” you 
murmured. “It’s something I can’t tackle 
alone. And you are the only person I dare 
tell. Oh, Ronnie, it is good to have a friend 
like you.” 

I led you to the clients’ chair, and sat on the 
corner of the writing-table, looking down into 
your face. 

“Whatever’s the trouble?” I asked again. 




To A Dead Woman 


H 7 


Quietly, and with only a faint tremor of 
excitement in your voice, you told me, unfold¬ 
ing Enid’s tragedy. She had intended to go 
to her people in Sussex a few days after you 
left. But this must have been only a pretence. 
For she wrote to you in Scotland to say she 
had an internal chill and was staying at the 
flat a few days longer. In view of the things 
she had said before you left, your suspicions 
were aroused; and you had written to her, af¬ 
fectionately but firmly, asking if they were 
true. She replied in the affirmative, saying 
moreover that she was very ill 5 she was quite 
alone, as she did not dare to get any one in to 
look after her. She hoped it would all be 
successfully over soon. Alarmed, you had re¬ 
turned at once by the night train (it was just 
like you!); and on your arrival that morning 
had found her dangerously, perhaps desper¬ 
ately, ill. 

a In an ordinary case I should have sent im¬ 
mediately for the doctor, in spite of Enid’s 
protest. But I know these things are very 
serious, and I don’t want to mess things up for 
her, or to make more trouble than is necessary; 




14B 


Love Letters 


so I came straight to you. She must have at¬ 
tention at once; she is very ill. It’s terrible to 
see her curled up with pain, and frightened to 
death. Poor little Enid! IPs as bad as an 
ordinary confinement, if not worse; and she 
will have nothing but ill-health at the end of 
it. But she is a brave kid, by Jove! and noth¬ 
ing will induce her to have a doctor of her own 
accord.” 

“You must get one in at once. But who 
performed the operation?” 

“She refuses to say. I don’t know whether 
it was a doctor or not; but whoever it was has 
made a big hash of it.” 

“That often happens—far more often than 
people know. I see such a lot of it in my 
police court work. We have cases every week; 
and this is only one corner of the country. And 
the cases that are discovered are only a frac¬ 
tion of those that are hushed up. If girls only 
knew . . .” 

You ’phoned at once for your own doctor. 
He was out, but was expected in by four, so you 
left a message for him to come to your studio 




To A Dead Woman 


149 


at once. I got my hat and went back with you 
in the taxi which was waiting at the door. 

“What about Lockwood? Does he know?” 
I asked. 

“He’s in Wales or somewhere, fishing,” was 
your reply. “I asked Enid if she had let him 
know she was ill, and she shook her head.” 

I found myself humming a tune as we ar¬ 
rived at our destination. 

Though I did not go into her room, I could 
gather from the studio something of the an¬ 
guish Enid was going through. I could hear 
her complaints, now in a voice of low moaning, 
now almost rising to a shriek. The sounds 
still haunt me of a night sometimes when I lie 
awake, though it is long ago; sounds of a vic¬ 
tim caught in a trap, of a girl in ^ain. 

The doctor did not come until after five; 
and I waited alone, reading the Strand Maga¬ 
zine, I remember. I remember, too, the very 
story I read and some of the pictures. I re¬ 
member wondering how you came by it, and 
noticing it was several months old, the relic 
perhaps of some railway journey. Perhaps 
you bought it because you had finished your 




150 


hove betters 


book. Perhaps some one bought it for you, or 
you found it left in the train. All those trivial 
fancies of long ago I remember as if it were 
yesterday. And all the while I listened mor¬ 
bidly for sounds from the next room, sounds 
of pain without hope. 

“Make some tea, there’s a dear boy.” You 
had come in to report progress. “I’m simply 
dead. Pve had no lunch. Perhaps it will do 
Enid good, too 3 you will find the things in the 
kitchen. You know where.” 

Later, when you came to get the tea, you 
told me Enid was delirious. 

“She’s talking all sorts of stuff. I have 
gathered one thing, though: it was a woman 
that did it. She keeps saying over and over 
again, ‘I won’t give the woman’s name, I won’t 
give the woman’s name.’ Poor child! She’s 
frightened to death.” 

You drank a cup of tea hurriedly, and went 
back. Presently you returned. 

“I wish the doctor would come,” you said. 
“I don’t like the look of her. She’s quieter 
now3 but there’s something in her face that 




To A Dead Woman 151 

makes me afraid. Oh, Ronnie, if she were to 
die! Ought we to wire for her people?” 

“Better wait until the doctor has been; he 
can’t be long now,” I said, taking your hand. 
You stood for a moment looking into my face. 
For just a second you smiled, forgetting Enid 
and all the world except our great friendship. 
Then you withdrew your hand, and slipped 
quietly back to her. Almost directly after¬ 
wards the doctor arrived. 

When he had been in the bedroom for a 
few minutes, he returned with you, looking 
very stern. 

“It’s about as bad as it can be,” he said to 
me. “I shall have to operate at once; it is 
the only chance of saving her life. And it is 
by no means a certainty. I cannot do it here. 
We shall have to move her into a nursing 
home. If you will telephone for a taxi, we 
will get her wrapped up ready to go. 5 ” 

“Shall we wire for her people?” I asked. 

“ ‘That is a matter for you to judge,’ ” he 
replied. “ ‘I cannot answer for her life. But 
it’s an ugly business, and the fewer people in 




152 


Love Letters 


the secret the better I should think. What do 
you say. Miss Marsden?’ ” 

“We’ll ask Enid herself,” was your reply. 

We got her into the home somehow, and 
when all was ready we put the question to her. 
She begged us not to wire for any one; so we 
agreed to leave it until after the operation, and 
see how she got on. When we did wire, it 
was already too late. The girl died before her 
mother came 3 and with her died one more 
human dream of love and freedom. Poor 
Enid! 

“Make no deep scrutiny 
Into her mutiny 

Rash and undutiful: 

Past all dishonour, 

Death has left on her 
Only the beautiful.” 

What the doctor said to her mother we never 
exactly knew. But the first time I met you 
after her death, you told me you had wired 
the news to Lockwood. 

“If only she had taken your advice and 
married him!” I said. 

“No, dear. My advice was wrong. Look 




To A Dead Woman 


153 


at this,” and you produced a post card from 
your vanity-bag. “I found it by her bedside 
after she had been moved to the home.” 

It was a post card from Wales in Lock¬ 
wood’s handwritingj and it ran as follows: 

“How are you? Pm having a wonderful 
time! Topping weather here and great sport. 
Shall probably stay a fortnight longer. Hope 
your little affair has passed off all right. Write 
soon and tell me.—Love, F. L.” 

“The damned fool,” I exclaimed. “He 
evidently knew what she intended. He must 
be mad to treat it as lightly as that.” 

“Just an ordinary coward,” was your answer. 

“To do him justice,” I replied, “I don’t sup¬ 
pose for a moment he realised how dangerous 
it was.” 

“He must have realised it,” you insisted. 
“He took good care not to be mixed up in it, 
and to be out of the danger zone—that’s all.” 

“You are not quite fair, dear. The whole 
thing is so horrible to you that you don’t un¬ 
derstand how frequent it is, and how lightly 
people take it. There is no excuse for Lock- 




154 


hove betters 


wood 5 but I don’t believe that he thought there 
was any real danger, or that he stayed away 
deliberately.” 

And my view, if you remember, turned out 
to be correct. For directly Lockwood received 
your wire, he came rushing back to town, and 
sought me out at once. I never saw a fellow so 
broken up. 

“I offered to marry her,” he said, “but she 
refused. I didn’t press it, because I wasn’t in 
love with her, nor she with me. She insisted 
that she had gone into the trouble with her 
eyes open, and would get out of it by herself. 
Her first idea was to have the baby and face 
the world with it. Then she got a panic, and 
decided to take the other tack. It was her af¬ 
fair, not mine; and she wouldn’t let me inter¬ 
fere one way or the other. I knew lots of 
women do these things, and I didn’t really take 
it very seriously. But, by God, Ronnie!”— 
and it was the only time I ever saw him deeply 
moved—“if I had had the least idea that any¬ 
thing like this would happen, I would have 
damned well made her marry me rather than let 




To A Dead Woman 


155 


her risk it. I may be a rotter, but I am not 
such a blackguard as that.” 

“What the devil did you make love to her 
for, if you weren’t in love with her?” I asked. 

And then he let out the strangest part of 
all the story, the part I never told you. 
I wonder if you guessed it? 

“I ran up against those girls only a short 
time before you did,” he said. He spoke in 
jerks, as if the truth could only burst from 
him with an effort. “It was Olivia that at¬ 
tracted me. I think I fell in love with her. 
Anyway I went to see her nearly every day. 
But Olive wouldn’t look at me, while Enid— 
well, Enid got a ‘pash.’ And then you came 
along and made the running with Olive; and 
she evidently liked you, and I saw that it was 
no use. And a sort of devil got hold of me, 
and as I could not get what I wanted, I just 
took what I could get. And this is what has 
come of it. And I hate myself. And I am 
ashamed to see Olive. And yet, I think I love 
Olive more and more as the days go by. If 
only she had been good to me, if only she could 
have liked me a little, all this would never 




156 


Love Letters 


have happened. But she was so damned stand¬ 
offish. And now she will never forgive me. 
Do you think she ever will?” 

“I don’t think Olive will speak to you again, 
at least not for a long while,” I answered. 
“She feels it all terribly, and she has said some 
hard things about you. I have told her you 
didn’t realise; but it is no use, at present at 
any rate.” 

I bade him good-bye. I disliked him more 
than ever. And yet, terrible as was his re¬ 
sponsibility, I could not lay the whole blame 
at his door; and in my heart I was sorry for 
him, in spite of his whining and his selfishness. 
It does not take much of a man to win the love 
of an average girl ; and Lockwood was good 
enough for Enid while she was a girl and alone. 
But when the mystery of motherhood had 
burst upon her, when she knew that she was a 
woman and needed a real man to uphold her 
and see her through—ah, what function of man 
is more sacred than this!—she could not turn 
to him, because she knew instinctively that from 
a nature like his no help could come. Passion, 
terrible in its consequence, is only the smallest 


\ 




To A Dead Woman 


157 


part of love$ it can unlock for a girl the gate of 
maternity, but cannot go with her across the 
threshold. And in the world of to-day, with 
its economic pressure and its cold cruelty, who 
dares cross that threshold alone? 

Good-night! 




VII 


Friday morning . 

D EAREST and Best, — . . . This is my 
last day in your little village inn. I 
have been very quiet here; I had almost said 
happy, for I have been with you. Never since 
you went away have I been so much with you, 
so close to you. For your household, for your 
husband, you are dead, dead since Tuesday 
morning. For me you have lived again in the 
memories that have been conjured up around 
the fire of this little parlour, so far from the 
world of my work and my ten years’ loneliness, 
so near to where you lie. To-morrow I shall 
go away, leaving the presentation clock upon 
the sideboard, the two small china figures on 
the mantelpiece, and the great faces of Mr. 
and Mrs. Thorndike staring from the wall; and 
next week the toil of life will start afresh. 
There is only this evening left—this evening 
and to-morrow morning. 

158 


To A Dead Woman 


159 


I have had a longing to look upon your face 
once more$ I wish I had gone up to the house 
yesterday to see you. But now it is too late} 
and no one will look on you again. They do 
not even know that I am here} for when I left 
you on Tuesday I bade good-bye to nurse, and 
they probably thought I was going back to 
London. Who could have supposed that I 
should hide myself in this corner, writing to 
you, living with your memory, and waiting for 
to-morrow to come? 

Not even Flora suspects that my sojourn 
here has anything to do with you. She prattled 
glibly of to-morrow’s funeral when she cleared 
away breakfast just now. 

“It’ll be a big affair, sir, an’ no mistake. She 
was a kind lady, and everybody loved her. 
You’ll see, sir, the whole village will turn out 
to see her laid to rest. You’d better go to the 
church if you’ve nothing better to do.” 

“Thanks, Flora. I think I will, before I go 
back to London.” 

“Ah! you’re going away to-morrow, sir? 
I’m sorry. And we’ll all be, I’m sure. It 
makes a change to have a gentleman stay a few 




i6o 


Love Letters 


days like that. And you aren’t no trouble 
either, sir. What I mean, you just writes 
and goes out, and eats your meals without 
complaining.” 

“There’s nothing to complain about.” 

“That’s just your kindness$ but I don’t 
expect it’s what you’re used to. We’re plain 
folk here, but we do our best.” 

I looked up from my newspaper. 

“Look here, Flora,” I said, “don’t you worry. 
You’ve given me good meals and good service, 
and a cheerful face to boot; and it will be a 
long time before I forget the week I spent at 
the Anchor Inn.” 

I forced a merry smile. 

“Thank you, sir,” she said, pausing at the 
door with the tray. “But mind you go to that 
funeral I spoke of 3 it’ll be a sight worth seeing. 
I’m always interested in christenings and 
funerals and weddings an’ the like o’ that, 
being so near the church, I suppose it is. But 
the best of all was last year, with the—now 
what was it?” she said, pausing. “You know, 
sir, a long word. It’s in the Prayer Book. A 
lot o’ children went, an’ the Bishop came him- 




To A Dead Woman 


161 


self, and my! there were some cars, stretching 
all down the road to the blacksmith’s shop. 
What was it again? A long word-” 

“Confirmation?” I suggested. 

“Yes, o’ course it was. Confirmation. That’s 
it. I knew it was a long word. That was a 
big dayj but to-morrow’ll be just as big, I 
reckon. Mind you go, sir, if you’ve got the 
time.” 

And she went out, tray in hand, dragging the 
door behind her with her foot, leaving me to 
take up my tale where I left it. 

The afternoon of Enid’s funeral drew us 
closer together, spiritually and physically, than 
at any other time before or since. We left the 
cemetery with her mother, lunched with her 
at the Grosvenor Hotel, and saw the last of her 
from the platform as the train steamed slowly 
out of the station. Then mechanically we 
turned our steps northward up Grosvenor 
Place to Hyde Park Corner, and wandered 
into the Park. We crossed the broad road 
between the arch and the statue, avoiding the 
cars that swept silently by, their lamps gleam¬ 
ing in the sun, their occupants gay with veils 





Love Letters 


162 


and feathers. Then we turned half left and, 
leaving the populous pathways, plunged into 
the heart of the Park itself. 

It was a blazing day in August, and all 
London was bathed in gold. The parched 
earth, worn bare by the City’s myriad feet, 
showed green only on the little slopes around 
the trees where a few sheep, brown with 
London smoke, panted in the scanty shade. 
Chairs, bright green in the sunshine, stood 
empty in groups of two or three; for no smart 
people were in the Park at that hour, and the 
others mostly lay upon the ground, or wan¬ 
dered idly by, alone or in couples. An ill- 
dressed youth, with his hat tilted on the back of 
his head, slouched past us whistling and tapping 
trees and railings with his stick. Two lovers 
walked by, looking at the ground and talking 
in an undertone. Small children played in 
groups, rolling on the earth; one tiny boy in 
diminutive knickerbockers was howling and 
stamping his feet, his eyes closed and his mouth 
open lengthways; slapped by his elder sister, 
he only howled the more. Under the trees 
here and there we passed a man who lay asleep 




To A Dead Woman 


163 


flat on his face, tired with toil, perhaps, or heavy 
with beer. A girl’s dress gleamed white in the 
shadow against the black sleeve of her com¬ 
panion curving round her neck. And away 
in the distance the roofs of lofty houses 
showed above the green belt of trees. 

We talked of Death, as people always do 
after a funeral. I said all the usual things— 
I smile now at the thought of them!—that it 
had come so suddenly, that it could so easily 
have been avoided, that Enid was so young to 
die. We quoted passages from great writers 
of the past, Shakespeare, Shelley, Byron. And 
then, if you remember, I discovered—or 
rather, we discovered, for it was in talks with 
you that all my best thoughts came, and who 
could say which thought was mine or yours?— 
the philosophy of Death that underlies the work 
of the greatest living composer of music, 
Richard Strauss. We had often heard his 
symphonies together; but that afternoon, walk¬ 
ing side by side after the funeral across the 
sun-seared Park, we found in them a fuller 
meaning than before. 

“In his ‘Don Juan,’” I said, “the theme 




Love Letters 


164 

is of life only, its growth, its hopes and 
difficulties, its loves and triumphs, and its final 
decay. At the end, life just runs down like a 
clock; all is over, he is dead. And when the 
orchestra ceases playing we are dumb as in the 
presence of the dead. For Don Juan is of 
earth, earthly j his career is all on the material 
plane. ‘Till EulenspiegeP has in him more of 
the immortal. Strauss traces in music the spirit 
of frolic that does not flag even on his death¬ 
bed, and brings him, too, at last a well-earned 
peace j but when he dies his whimsicality drops 
away, and we remember the goodness and 
friendliness of his nature, that underlay all the 
mischief of his life. Unlike Don Juan he is 
not quite dead; something of him remains in the 
hearts of his fellow-men. But the full mean¬ 
ing of what we call Death is only made clear 
in ‘Tod und Verklarung.’ Here the centre 
of gravity is frankly beyond the grave; this life 
is but a prelude to the grandeur that comes 
after. Death is not a running down of the 
clock, nor a music of memories; but an apothe¬ 
osis, with the giant orchestra sweeping onward 




To A Dead Woman 165 

to unfold the endless Ruhe of the Life that is 
to come.” 

“But even this,” you said, “is only half the 
truth. In making Death beautiful, Strauss 
makes too much of Death. He lays a stress 
upon it, perpetuating the fallacy of its existence. 
Surely the simplest, the easiest thing to be¬ 
lieve is just that Death does not exist. We 
do not know it. We have never seen it. All 
we know of Life tells us it is alive—in the trees, 
the flowers, the insects; in the moonbeams 
bathing the garden, in the sunshine dancing 
on the sea. When the body ceases to function, 
Life is not dying, it is breaking out into other 
forms of Life. And we, the Ego, the Per¬ 
sonality that is incarnate in the body—has not 
that gone away to live elsewhere? Why invent 
a Death for it, because we cannot see it go, or 
tell where it is gone?” 

Ever since then, and more especially since 
you went away and left me to live my life 
alone, I have searched the world for Death; 
but I have never found it. Forms of life are 
transient, we watch them come and go. But 
Life itself is Eternal; we are a part of it, and it 




Love Letters 


166 


is all we know. The chemist founds his science 
on the elements, but cannot tell whence they 
come; he knows nothing of a Beginning or an 
End. We only see a yard before us as in a 
mist, and a yard behind us; but Birth and 
Death, the Beginning and the End, we have 
never seen and we can never see; they are only 
words that we invent to express the limit of 
our knowledge. Figments of our little brains, 
they have no counterpart in the Great Reality, 
which is always there and always living, Eter¬ 
nal, Infinite. There is no Death. 

Often before that afternoon I had been 
struck by the clarity of your mind. On the 
bridge after our first little dinner, watching 
the stars twinkle in the water; again when I 
told you of Muriel Renton, and you quite sim¬ 
ply took her in. But that afternoon, in con¬ 
trast with the waste and pain of the last few 
days, the cowardice of Lockwood, the passion 
and punishment of Enid, the meaningless tears 
of the little old mother in black and all the 
jarring mummery of the funeral—your spirit 
shone with undimmed whiteness, transparent to 
all the Beauty of Life, untouched and untar- 




To A Dead Woman 


167 


nished by the havoc of mankind. And I was 
filled again with the sole desire to share this 
beauty with you, and to change our friendship 
for a marriage-union closer still. 

I told you so. I told you that I loved you 
as I had never thought it possible to love; and 
you told me in your simple, direct way that 
you loved me too. 

“When did you first begin to love me like 
this?” you asked. “Come, let us sit down, and 
talk about it.” 

We took two little green chairs that stood 
alone in the centre of a worn patch of grass, 
and sat side by side, with our backs to the light, 
looking alternately at the blazing London 
houses in the distance and at our shadows on 
the ground. 

“You certainly did not fall in love with me 
at first sight. What about the dead shepherd’s 
saw?” 

“No,” I confessed. “At our first meeting 
I was interested, attracted if you like. But 
I did not fall in love with you then. I have 
often been more definitely attracted at a first 
meeting to others than to you.” 




168 


Love Letters 


“Then either you do not really love me now, 
or Marlowe was all wrong,” you said in banter. 
“Which is it?” 

“He was all wrong.” 

I paused for a moment, thinking. 

“Yes, the dear dead shepherd was all wrong; 
he spoke but half a truth.” 

“You mean that the experience of men varies, 
and what is true of some people is not neces¬ 
sarily true of others? Or perhaps there are 
different kinds of love?” you continued. “And 
the love that comes at first sight is a devour¬ 
ing thing, a furnace compared to which ours 
is but a flame. Suppose we married and that 
furnace came to one of us, afterwards, with 
some one else? What then?” 

I did not answer at once, but poked my stick 
into the crumbling earth. 

“There are different paths to Love,” I 
said presently, “but Love itself is of one kind. 
It is not a simple emotion, but a complex 
thing. It is compounded of three elements, 
the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. 
Any two of them alone, nay, any one of them 
perhaps, may produce an emotion which we 




To A Dead Woman 


169 


loosely call Love. But only when all three 
are involved is Love really complete. The 
Love that comes at first sight is physical in 
origin—two beings running together like quick¬ 
silver directly their bodies come within range. 
Sometimes, nay, often, the mental and spirit¬ 
ual affinities develop later; Love then becomes 
complete, and Marlowe comes into his own. 
But this does not necessarily happen; if not, 
when the physical Love dies, there is nothing 
left. Almost as often, as in our own case, there 
is a gradual growth; a mental or spiritual link 
attracts two people together, until there is 
awakened within them also that physical sym¬ 
pathy which makes their kisses sweet. I love 
you, dear, every way. Your thoughts, your 
feelings, call up an answering chord in me. 
But”—I dropped my voice and looked into 
your face—“there is something more than 
merely this; I love to hear you speak for the 
music of your voice, not only for what you say; 
I want to be alone with you and close enough to 
touch you with my hand—do you understand?” 

You clutched at me; I felt your arm stiffen 
and tremble as you held my hand tightly, 




170 


Love Letters 


very tightly in yours. It was the first time 
I had seen this side of you. There swept 
through me a great longing to kiss you; your 
lips looked full and soft and sensitive. Had 
we been in your rooms that afternoon our whole 
life-story might have been changed. But we 
were in the open Park, out of doors in the cen¬ 
tre of London. The moment passed, and it 
never returned. 

You were careful that it never should return. 
You loved me; I always believe I was the 
only man you ever wholly loved. But you 
did not feel that you could marry me; you 
valued yourself, your work, your freedom, 
your privacy, too well to sacrifice them on the 
altar of a passion or a friendship. And you 
knew, as I know now, that I was not big enough 
or free enough to share with you the highest 
form of life. Once I shirked my work for a 
day for you, braving the wrath of the im¬ 
peccable Doyle, if you remember; had I been 
prepared to give up all for you, always, you 
might have joined with me, and our lives had 
been otherwise. I would have done so if you 
had put it to me like that. But you wanted 




To A Dead Woman 


I 7 I 

it to come freely, spontaneously, not as a con¬ 
dition. The fact that it did not so come meant, 
in your eyes, not that I was either wrong or 
wanting or less lovable, but that you and I 
were not intended to be together all the time. 
I know myself now that I was not big enough 
for you for if I had been, I should have just 
taken you, as a man takes a woman, and bent 
you to my will. And if I had my life again 
I should do this 3 because, O best beloved of 
all the world, Life without you has been wasted 
and not worth while; you only, of all the 
women I have met, had the power to make me 
a bigger man than I am. You only have I 
loved utterly, in cold blood as in hot, with my 
reason as well as with my longing, not only in 
the time of our foregathering, but during the 
long seasons since you went away. 

“There is a real Me and a real You,” you 
said presently. “They are very close, but 
somehow they are not the same. They can 
touch, they do touch, when we listen to music, 
and just now when you spoke to me in a low 
voice. But with us two, as we are, they cannot 




172 


Love Letters 


merge j it would be foolish to try, and it would 
only spell sorrow in the end.” 

“The real ‘Me, 5 55 I said, “is surely the same 
in every one. More or less covered up, 
clothed and caught in different wrappings, it 
is always there; men and woman are like many 
coloured panes of glass behind which there 
is a great light shining. It shows through, 
now red, now green, now purple \ sometimes 
dim, sometimes almost white; according to the 
colour and quality of the pane through which 
it shines. But the light behind is always there, 
and always the same, for you and for me and 
for all the world. The race bar and the col¬ 
our bar, the erection of sex or class distinctions, 
are the denial of the Light itself, the sin against 
the Holy Ghost. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done 
it unto one of the least of these, ye have done 
it unto Me. 5 55 

“I do not know, 55 you answered, “whether 
my light is the same as yours or other people’s. 
But I do feel that within me, behind me, there 
is something Divine, and that my body is a 
window through which Light is trying to pour 
into the world. That is why I wouJd keep it 




To A Dead Woman 


173 


white and pure 5 that is why not even for you, 
O friend and lover, would I give up the cus¬ 
tody of Myself, or clog the Personality that 
belongs to God alone.” 

“But can the window of a woman shine 
clear without human love, without mother¬ 
hood?” I asked. 

“Perhaps not. That is what Enid felt; that 
is the truth that she was blindly stretching out 
towards. If I felt like that I should do as 
she did 5 but I should face it out to the end, 
whatever the cost, as she should have done. 
And sometimes, for a while, I do feel like that 
too. But even at such a moment, as when I 
gripped your hand just now, I know that 
it is not the whole of me that calls; there is a 
chord in me that does not respond even to 
your love.” 

“It might one day,” I urged; “it must, it 
will. . . .” 

“Then, dear boy, I will tell you. At present 
I am only wholly free, wholly happy, wholly 
myself, when . . .” 

“When?” I repeated. 




174 


Love Letters 


“When I hear music j when I make music $ 
when I am quite alone.” 

Was it the maiden fear in you that was put¬ 
ting up this last defence? Was it the aesthetic 
in you that shuddered at the grossness of the 
flesh, as a bather shivers on the brink of the 
cold sea before he takes the plunge? Or 
were you really soaring on a higher plane that 
I could never reach? I do not know. I only 
know that I could have taken you there and 
then in spite of all you said; and that later you 
gave your life and your body to some one else, 
and became the mother of his children. 

“Isn’t that rather a selfish view of life?” 
I went on. “It leads within and not without; 
to repression, not to expression. Love of man 
and woman, on the other hand, is the thres¬ 
hold of love for all humanity. It calls out 
feelings of ecstasy that are purely unselfish, 
and makes one long to give and share. The 
small ‘self’ that is C V merges into the larger 
‘Self’ that is ‘we two’5 and it is but a step for¬ 
ward to that greater merging in the ‘Self’ that 
is all humanity. So the longing to help and 
serve the loved one becomes a test of conduct 




To A Dead Woman 


175 


for all the rest} and the service of the world 
is no longer the product of an arid altruism, 
but the expression of a pulsing Self.” 

You turned to me, and gazing quickly 
round to make sure that no one was looking, 
you kissed me lightly on the cheek. 

“What a visionary you are!” you said. 
“But we are not all like that} at least I am not. 
If I were to give, I should lose myself, not 
find myself. My highest expression is in my 
music, and comes out of myself alone. And if 
that involves the repression of another part of 
me, be it so} it is the price I must pay. Per¬ 
haps it should not be so} perhaps it will not be 
so always} but I can only act as I feel, and I 
cannot feel as you do—not now. I want to 
keep clean, I will keep clean, and be myself 
alone. I must deny myself all that leads 
elsewhere. . .” 

“For me,” I answered impetuously, “there 
is no denial. I would get beyond denial to 
fulfilment} I would work through the satis¬ 
faction of the lower goods to the vision of the 
real Good that lies beyond.” 




176 


Love Letters 


“And if you smirch yourself in the process?” 
you asked. 

“So does the labourer smirch his hands, 
when he tills the soil.” 

The sun was moving round, and our shadows 
were lengthening on the grass. 

“Let us get some tea,” you suggested pres¬ 
ently. “I am very hot and thirsty.” 

“Have you ever had tea in Kensington Gar¬ 
dens, out of doors?” 

“No.” 

“We will go there,” I said. “It’s rather 
fun. You sit under large parasols and watch 
the people pass.” 

We walked westward and crossed the broad 
thoroughfare that leads south from Lancaster 
Gate. Just beyond the railings, under a group 
of trees, a dozen pink and white umbrellas, like 
a cluster of giant funguses, seemed to grow 
out of the earth. Beneath each umbrella stood 
a table with a white cloth. At one of them 
we sat down, and ordered tea from a neat 
waitress in a tight-fitting black dress, on which 
was spread a toy white apron. 




To A Dead Woman 


177 


Vehicles, mostly motor-cars, in ceaseless pro¬ 
cession hurried by; for in front of us, divid¬ 
ing Hyde Park from Kensington Gardens, lay 
the road connecting the districts lying south and 
north of the Park. Smart cars carried rich 
Jewesses noiselessly from Lancaster Gate to call 
on their less favoured but more aristocratic 
friends in Kensington. Taxis conveyed pas¬ 
sengers with luggage from Paddington to their 
houses in the south-western district. An oc¬ 
casional carriage and pair, more frequent then 
than now, bore an old gentleman for his drive 
in the cool of the afternoon, the coachman and 
footman perched bolt upright with little cock¬ 
ades sticking in their shining hats, the blood 
hackneys chafing at their tight bearing-reins. 
Now and then a rider, after a gallop on the 
north side under the trees, walked his horse 
back to the Row with neck sweating against the 
bridle, and flecks of froth dripping from the 
bit. 

“This is jolly,” you said, watching. “Why 
don’t more people come to tea out here? It 
is so cool and restful.” 

“Who wants to rest in London? People 




178 


Love Letters 


have no time \ their engagement books are full 
every hour of the day with work or pleasure. 
Besides, look at our tablecloth. It is covered 
with smuts.” 

“And the cakes,” you added, laughing. 

London people do not realize half enough 
how their lives are crabbed and directed by its 
smoke. The difference between the habits of 
London and Paris is more a question of smoke 
than of actual climate or character. The cafe 
life of the boulevards would be impossible in 
London for that reason alone. We miss a great 
dealj but we have one compensation of which 
the Parisian does not dream—the English fire¬ 
side. How many an acquaintance has ripened 
into friendship in two large arm-chairs! That, 
dear, was the beginning of our love, too, do you 
remember? How many a project has been 
conceived in the quiet of a firelit room, or died 
still-born because we were too comfortable to 
leave our corner by the fire! 

The ceaseless file of vehicles filled our con¬ 
versation, but our thoughts were far away, 
worrying out the trail that we had followed in 
the Park, before we moved to tea. 




To A Dead Woman 


179 


“I wonder why I attach this great importance 
to myself?” you said suddenly. “It is not that 
I am selfish, is it? I never really consider 
myself in the little things of life, do I? And 
yet, subconsciously always, becoming conscious 
only when some big change looms ahead, as, 
for instance, your proposal just now, I bring 
things up against myself as against a touch¬ 
stone by which I test their value. I do not 
ask ‘Is it good?’ but ‘Is it worthy of Me?’ I 
do not care if it is right, but only if it is right 
for me. I wonder why I do this. Do other 
people? Do you? I see men and women fol¬ 
lowing the habits of the crowd because other 
people do, drinking cocktails, buying dresses, 
because other people like them, until perforce 
they begin to like them themselves. So they 
seem to forget their personality, for good or 
for evil 3 they dress to a pattern, they live to 
a pattern, they just lose themselves in the 
crowd. I can’t do this. I never could. Does 
it mean that I am egotistical? Do I attach 
too much importance to myself?” 

“You are certainly not selfish, dear, in the 
ordinary sense,” I answered. “You are the 




i8o 


Love Letters 


least selfish person I know. And yet you are 
self-centred, somehow, Olive, in a noble way; 
it lends you dignity, it seems to make you 
good.” 

I had never heard you analyse yourself be¬ 
fore; usually you revealed yourself in a flash 
without knowing it. To-day you were think¬ 
ing aloud, and I wanted you to go on. So 
when there was no reply, I was tempted to 
draw you out further. 

“Those who are less highly evolved than the 
average man,” I said, “find the habit of the 
crowd a stimulus to draw them on. Some one 
heads a subscription list, and others follow who 
of their own initiative would never have given 
at all. But you are more highly evolved than 
most; the crowd is only a drag upon you. You 
have to forge your own path and make your 
own standards all the time. It tires you.” 

“I do not feel like that,” you said. “I am 
not conscious of forging a path. When I am 
at my best there is no sense of effort; I feel 
rather as if something wonderful were pouring 
through me, welling up from an Infinite within, 
taking shape in action or in song. No, there 




To A Dead Woman 


181 


is no effort, only fulfilment 3 I do not make 
myself, I let myself Be 3 it does not tire me, 
it rests me. If ever I feel the sense of effort, 
the collar-work of forging ahead, I take it as 
a warning that I am doing something artificial, 
pursuing a path not meant for me.” 

“But you do get tired, all the same, Olive,” 
I ventured. 

“Not 1 5 my body. It is my health that wor¬ 
ries me, and keeps me back. I am not strong, 
you know, Ronnie. I have been wondering 
lately if I am strong enough to be a singer. 
Why should the spirit of music within me be 
hampered by human coughs and colds? They 
are the legacy of my childhood, the aftermath 
of other days.” 

You paused. Quite a long time you paused. 
Something was trembling on the edge of 
avowal. Then it overflowed. 

“I am going to tell you all about my child¬ 
hood to-day, all I have never told you. You 
love me well enough to ask me to be your wife; 
now at least you have a right to know.” 

Since our first dinner I had never questioned 
you about your past, on which you were 




182 


Love Letters 


always strangely silent. Your narrative came 
as a surprise, almost as a consolation. 

“My mother died when I was quite small,” 
you began. “I do not remember her. I was 
an only child, and lived alone with my father 
in the little Suffolk village of which you have 
heard me speak. So much you know. But 
there is a lot more. Would it interest you?” 

“Of course,” I said. 

Then you poured out your tale. Your father 
was the village organist. A musician to the 
finger-tips, with an artist’s temperament, he 
had had only limited opportunities of a musical 
educationj and his job in life was to play the 
hymns and accompany the psalms in a tiny cor¬ 
ner of this unmusical world. Cramped and 
stunted, his talent found expression only in 
the voluntaries that he improvised on the ugly 
little organ before and after service. You still 
remembered those improvisations as something 
much finer and more beautiful than any other 
music that you heard in your childhood. Often 
on a summer Sunday evening people would 
linger a little to hear him ramble on, forgetful 
of time and of his surroundings, communing 




To A Dead Woman 


1S3 


with the Universe and with his own Soul. Then 
they would slip out, one by one, and you alone 
would be left, save for the yokel who pumped 
the bellows, ill-content at being kept so late. 
When as last it was over, your father would 
toss a sixpence to the organ-blower for his 
pains, and lead you from the church, passing 
his fingers through your hair. 

“There is only you to understand, little 
woman,” he would say, as you walked together 
across the fields to the cottage where you lived. 

He had dreams, your father; and ambitions. 
Though you were only a child, you were old 
enough to feel that. He would practise the 
organ for hours, in spurts; and go into Ipswich 
to play the larger organs there, hoping to fit 
himself for some better post. Two or three 
times the hope came to the verge of fulfilment; 
but he was always passed over. The bad news 
drove him back into his shell again, and for a 
while he ceased his practising. Gradually he 
became resigned to remaining where he was, 
and at last he tried no more. 

As you first remembered him, he was a slight 
man with thin nose and a clear skin, and masses 




Love Letters 


184 

of fair hair that rolled back in waves from a 
tall forehead. You got your forehead from 
him, though your colouring Was your mother’s. 
From him, too, you derived the strong fingers 
which I always admired so much, though his 
were squarer at the tips from much playing. 
Sometimes he would bury himself in his room 
for hours with pen and music paper, composing 
an organ piece, or a service, or an anthem ; 
which the village heard at some Easter festival, 
and gaped at without understanding; they liked 
the old tunes best. And at some time in your 
very early childhood he composed a Mass for 
organ, full orchestra, choir, and solo voices, 
which had never seen the light, but with which 
he hoped to make his name some day. 

One of his tragedies was that he loved sound 
and light and ritual; and the little church Was 
ultra-Protestant, with an Evangelical parson of 
the old school, and a congregation that brooked 
no Popery. 

“But we will get to the town soon, little 
woman,” he would tell you. “And we will 
have an organ that’s worth playing, and a con¬ 
gregation that understands.” 




To A Dead Woman 185 

Later, when his vision did not soar so high, 
he would talk no more about moving to a town, 
but fell back upon a change in the village itself. 

“This old buffer with the beard must die off 
soon,” he would say, “and then we will get a 
new parson, a younger man fresh from college, 
who will make things hum. You’ll see, little 
woman j you’ll see.” 

But the change did not come. His hair got 
thinner on the top of his head, and longer and 
more untidy over his collar. He became more 
slovenly in his appearance, his suits wore 
threadbare, his trousers bagged at the knee. His 
nose, once thin, got fuller and stitched with 
red; his eyelids drooped j when he kissed you, 
you turned your face away from the fumes of 
whiskey that hung about his breath. In the 
evenings he was irritable and unaccountable; 
and sometimes at Sunday evening service he 
was drunk, and played the wrong tunes, scold¬ 
ing the choir for his own mistakes, in a voice 
querulous and audible half down the church. 
You remembered how your cheeks burned with 
shame, as you knelt with your face in your 




186 


Love Letters 


hands, thinking that everybody w|as looking at 
you. 

Then at last the old parson died, and the 
new man came. Tall, slim, with clean-shaven 
face and heavy jaw, wearing a silver crucifix on 
the clerical waistcoat of thick black ribbed silk, 
he began at once to hold more services, to deck 
the altar with lights and ornaments. And most 
of all he wanted more music, good music; and 
for a day or two your father thought his chance 
had come. But the new vicar had no use for 
a drunken organist; his broom swept clean, and 
swept your father out into the world in which 
he had no place. Penniless too, withal, except 
for a purse collected by the congregation, and 
presented publicly; for the Protestant farmers 
of the Suffolk village were out to fight the 
Popery of the new vicar, and were glad to use 
your father as a stick to beat him with. And 
one of them, a man of kindly heart and influ¬ 
ence, helped you to a scholarship at the Royal 
College of Music in London, whither you went, 
still a child, to begin your own career. 

All this you told me as we watched the 
motors pass that afternoon; and more beside. 




To A Dead Woman 


187 


You told me of your father’s final degradation 5 
how you learned that for years past he had 
wasted time and money—money that you both 
badly needed—in the company of a strange 
woman j how when the crash came he went to 
her and drank himself into poverty until she, 
too, cast him out. And how one day he 
brought to you in London the manuscript of 
his Mass, the work of his earlier days. 

“Keep this, little woman,” he said. “Per¬ 
haps when you are a great singer, you will make 
it known for me after I am gone.” 

“I would rather keep you,” you said, and 
begged with tears to be allowed to come and 
live with him and look after him. “We can 
manage somehow. I can sing in the street, and 
you can play.” 

He took you at your word. You left the 
College 5 and for eight long months you lived 
with him, sallying forth in all weathers day by 
day to sing to the passersby, your father playing 
for you on a tiny harmonium that he wheeled 
from street to street. You told me of all your 
adventures—of days when you earned pounds, 
and of days when you earned almost nothing 




18 8 


Love Letters 


at all; of men who tried to make love to you, 
and others who flung you a half-crown for love 
of your voice j of coffee-stalls where you re¬ 
freshed j and in particular of a little tavern in 
the West End in a side street off Shaftesbury 
Avenue, where you housed your harmonium, 
where you were always petted, and where your 
father drank himself drunk nearly every night, 
too drunk sometimes to return to the little room 
in Camberwell which you called your home. 

Happily for you, though you told it me with 
tears as the greatest sorrow of all, your father 
caught a chill one rainy week-end, and took to 
his bed. His heart, weakened by alcohol, suc¬ 
cumbed to the pneumonia that set in 3 and you 
found yourself all alone, without one relation, 
one friend in the world. But your back was 
against the wall, and you had only yourself to 
think of now. Moreover, you had learned in 
the last week of something that your father 
had hidden from you all the time. Your 
mother had left money for you, quite a small 
sum, from which your father received only the 
income, which was almost negligible. But 
now that he was dead it became yours abso- 




To A Dead Woman 


189 


lutely. You went back to the College, and 
told your story to the professor under whom 
you had begun to study. With your money, 
and help that the College gave you, you were 
able to finish your training and start on your 
career. But the worry and exposure had told 
upon your health; perhaps that was why you 
were not strong. 

“And the Mass,” you ended. “Poor father! 
It was quite second-rate. The orchestration 
was childish, you know. And yet he had a gift 
of melody. Yes, in that respect it is almost 
good—at least it is sincere.” 

I could not break the silence that fell after 
your long story was told. When a corner of 
the veil is lifted from the childhood of one we 
love, silence alone has magic to pierce the 
mystery. 

“After we had dined at Kettner’s that first 
night,” you said, “you remember that I pressed 
your arm tightly going down a little street into 
Shaftesbury Avenue. You thought I meant 
to be friends, and so I did 3 but that was not the 
whole reason. The real reason was that at the 
corner there is the little tavern where father— 




190 


Love Letters 


where we-” You gave a little shiver 5 the 

same shiver that you gave when you talked of 
Lockwood, or Enid’s tragedy. 

“Let us go,” you said at length, rising. 

We walked still further west, through the 
gardens, before returning home. 

“I will show you the most beautiful view in 
London,” I said. 

We went out into the road, and turned left 
till we came to the bridge. 

“Look to the right,” I said. 

A broad expanse of water stretched away 
eastward, studded with little boats. 

“And now look there!” 

I pointed triumphantly to the left, westward. 
Just in front of us was the railing of the bridge 
—a long, oblique line as the base of the picture. 
On either side a frame of deep green foliage. 
And in the centre the Serpentine, a little lake, 
peaceful, silvered by the sun, disappeared into 
a thin line of fairy trees, out of which rose a 
church spire, graceful and slender against the 
evening sky, which seemed a bed of golden 
cushions waiting for the sun to sleep upon it. 
There is no more lovely scene in London, nor 





To A Dead Woman 


191 


in any other city, than this at eventide in sum¬ 
mer $ and to us at the close of a day begun in 
mourning, and full to the brim of sadness, it 
brought a sense of fitness and of peace, that 
reconciled me to my disappointment, and you 
to your loneliness, sealing our friendship with 
a golden seal. We wandered slowly towards 
the sun, hardly talking, hardly noticing, till 
we came to the Round Pond, the centre of the 
children’s paradise. Most of the tiny ones had 
gone indoors with their nurses to tea and to 
bed 3 only a few older children after long hours 
of afternoon school or home-lessons had come 
out to sail their boats upon the water before it 
was too late. We watched them play, and 
listened to their cries, all the keenness of future 
achievement concentrated on their temporary 
sport. Then we, too, went home, you to begin 
your new life without Enid, I to continue my 
old life without you. 




VIII 


Friday afternoon. 

S O much has happened in the years since I 
saw you, that I am constantly remember¬ 
ing things which I ought to tell you, things 
which have happened since we parted, but 
which belong to the days of you and me. One 
of these, the sequel of a story in which you 
played a part, was called to my mind by Flora 
to-day when she brought me my tea. I 
questioned her about the photograph on the 
sideboard, a family group in which she herself 
figured with her father and mother and one 
or two others. 

“Who is that?” I asked, pointing to a strap¬ 
ping lad in his teens, wearing a straw hat, a 
long tie, and a cummerbund instead of a waist¬ 
coat. 

“That is my brother Jack. He was killed 
in the war,” she replied sadly. 

192 


To A Dead Woman 


193 


I changed the subject, inquiring who the girl 
was with her hair down, standing by his side. 

“My sister.” 

“What has happened to her?” 

“She went to London many years ago.” 

“And since?” 

“We never hear of her now.” And Flora 
turned to go. 

I understood 5 and when she had left, I be¬ 
gan thinking of that other girl you once took 
as your maid; Muriel Renton, I think, was the 
name you knew her by, but she had so many 
names that I cannot be sure. It was just like 
you to take her and give her a chance ; and it 
would interest you, I know, to hear the rest of 
her story. But let me begin at the beginning. 

When I first met her she was only twenty, 
and her baby was barely a year old. Spencer 
Tower, my old Magdalen friend, had got 
mixed up with her somehow in London, and 
had taken her to live with him. They had a 
luxurious upper flat in Conduit Street, where 
I used to go and dine with them sometimes. I 
was struck with her simplicity of manner and 
natural beauty, so strangely out of keeping with 




194 


hove betters 


the life she had led. For Spencer told me that 
he had met her at a night club, and rescued her 
from some little German Jew pimp who beat 
her when she failed to bring money home. 
She could not leave the man because of her 
child, a baby girl whom she idolised, though 
she never knew exactly who was the father. 
Spencer was always a kind-hearted man, but 
drink and too much money had dragged him 
down, and most of his old friends had dropped 
him 5 so that this frail girl-mother brought a 
new meaning into his life. 

At first I hoped she would pull him round. 
She was never in love with him, but looked up 
to him with gratitude as a sort of fairy god¬ 
father, straining to keep him straight and to 
weave an atmosphere of home into the moder¬ 
nity of their West End flat. To see her in the 
evening, bending over the baby’s cot in a rich 
teagown of Chinese silk, and arranging the tiny 
pillow with her jewelled fingers, you would 
never have dreamt that barely three years had 
elapsed since she was scrubbing grates in a sta¬ 
tion hotel and fascinating foreign waiters with 




To A Dead Woman 


195 


her gift of ribald repartee that had its preco¬ 
cious origin in a London slum. 

Of course, this honeymoon existence did not 
last. One of his brothers held a partnership in 
the old-established firm of solicitors that his 
grandfather had founded, that his father had 
made famous, and that he himself might have 
carried on. The other brother was already a 
prominent Junior at the Bar. His sister had 
married the heir to a peerage. And he, the 
eldest son and the most promising of all, had 
squandered his life in the capitals of Europe, 
and was living under a pseudonym with a 
woman of the street, and a baby that was not 
his own. He kept off the drink for a while; 
but as he became more like his old self he began 
to realise the tragedy of his lost opportunities. 
So it was that his fresh start miscarried, and his 
very recovery drove him to drink again. 
Muriel struggled on for a while, and then she, 
too, gave up and drowned her failure in alcohol. 
I tried to persuade her to leave him, but with¬ 
out avail. 

“Where am I to go?” she said. “After all, 
he has been very good to me, and I must see 




196 


Love Letters 


him through. It’s for better or for worse, 
though we’re not married 3 even more so be¬ 
cause of that. What else can I do but stay?” 

And I had no answer to give. 

For some time after that I hardly saw them; 
but picture post cards from Paris or Monte 
Carlo reminded me of them from time to time. 

One Sunday morning I met them on the 
front at Brighton, and was horrified at the 
change in them both. He looked much older, 
and there were bags under his eyes. She was 
wrapped in costly furs; but her face had coars¬ 
ened, her expression had lost its charm, and a 
metallic ring in her voice rendered the Cockney 
accent more noticeable than before. The child 
had long ago been sent into the country to be 
looked after by strange people, whose only in¬ 
terest in its welfare was financial. I had given 
up accepting their invitations to dinner; it was 
no pleasure to me to go. 

Some time after I met you, returning from 
a day’s golfing in the country, I found a tele¬ 
gram on my table. 

“Spencer died last night. Please come at 
once.— Muriel.” 




To A Dead Woman 


197 


It was seven o’clock on a gorgeous summer 
evening when I arrived at their flat. The 
streets were thronged with shop-girls hurrying 
home} and theatre-goers in evening dress were 
alighting at the restaurant doors. The west¬ 
ern roofs were framed in a glow of red, that 
melted through a thin line of mauve into a sky 
that was still blue. 

The servant greeted me in a coat and skirt, 
preparing her departure. 

“I can’t stay no longer, sir. It’s not a fit 
house for a decent woman to be in.” 

“Why, what’s wrong?” I asked. 

“There ain’t nothing right, nor has been 
these three days. The guv-nor died last night 
of D. T.’s. He’s in there,” she explained, 
pointing to the bedroom door, “and she”—she 
jerked her thumb over her shoulder towards 
the sitting-room—“she’s in there, almost as 
dead as ’e is.” 

I brushed past her into the drawing-room 
and found Muriel with her hair dishevelled, 
lying in a dressing-gown, a drunken mass upon 
the hearthrug. The maid gave me all the ter¬ 
rible details of Spencer’s illness, from which 




198 


Love Letters 


I gathered how devotedly Muriel had nursed 
him night and day. Only those who have seen 
a man die of drink can imagine what that 
means. The day before she had wired for his 
brother, who had come with his wife, and left 
in disgust within five minutes. The doctor had 
sent for a nurse, who arrived only a few hours 
before Spencer’s death, and left in the morn¬ 
ing. Muriel, who for days had eaten little and 
slept less, opened a bottle of whisky for her 
breakfast and had nearly finished it by noon. 

A sovereign from my pocket and the promise 
of more to follow persuaded the maid to re¬ 
main, but only on condition that I stayed too. 
While I went out to dinner the maid refused to 
stay in the flat alone, so we locked the door and 
arranged to return at ten o’clock. When we 
got back, the maid went to bed 3 I spent most 
of the night on the drawing-room sofa, read¬ 
ing. Shortly before dawn Muriel awoke 3 by 
breakfast-time she had taken a bath, and looked 
a little more like her old self. 

I could write pages about the next few days. 
The flat belonged to Spencer’s estate, and the 




To A Dead Woman 


199 


family gave her a week to leave. There was 
no provision for her or her child in his will, 
which had been made years before. We ad¬ 
vertised for a later will, but none was forth¬ 
coming. I made a personal appeal to Spen¬ 
cer’s brother for her, and was coldly received. 
Sitting in his spacious chambers in Lincoln’s 
Inn, he said the woman had dragged Spencer 
down 5 and the sooner she returned to her own 
kind the better. I lost my temper, and told 
him that when Muriel first went to live with 
Spencer she was a healthy girl with a pretty 
face and bright eyes; that it was Spencer who 
had taught her to drink, and made her the 
coarse, muddy-complexioned woman she now 
was; having taken the best years of her life and 
abused them, he ought at least to have pro¬ 
vided for her future. Eventually the family 
sent her a cheque for £50, which she tore in 
pieces and sent back to them in an unstamped 
envelop. 

I had just decided to take my cottage at 
Northwood, and I suggested to her that she 
should come down and look after it, keep the 
place clean, and cook for me and my friends 




200 


Love Letters 


on Saturday and Sunday. She turned up her 
nose at the offer; it seemed to be a confession 
of failure to become a servant again. I did 
not press the matter as I was rather afraid of 
her drinking, and was glad not to have the re¬ 
sponsibility of her. So I rented a house for 
her and her child at Shepherd’s Bush, near the 
White City, which was then the great attraction 
of London; where she took in lodgers for a 
livelihood—men who were working there. 
But the house was soon empty, for Muriel was 
always drunk; and the money I spent was 
wasted. She drifted back to the old life; and 
all I could do was to take the child and hand 
her over to be brought up by decent working 
folk in the country. 

Years afterwards, on my return from cham¬ 
bers at night, I found a note from Muriel at 
my club. Her life had alternated between 
prison and prostitution; but now she had sunk 
even lower still, and I found her in a venereal 
hospital. There she had lain for some weeks, 
and the rest and diet had conjured her lost 
youth back into her face; she looked almost 
beautiful with her hair falling in abundant 




To A Dead Woman 


201 


clusters upon the curves of her shoulders, white 
as the pillow of her little bed. 

“It’s an ill wind blows nobody any good,” 
she said, laughing, “and this illness has cured 
me of the drink any way. I don’t think I shall 
ever touch a drop again.” 

I was sceptical; but a childlike hope shone 
through all she said that day. She would start 
afresh; she would work for herself and her 
child; if I could find something for her to do 
and if I could give her one more chance she 
would not let me down. 

So Nature breeds hope from despair—new 
life from corruption. 

I promised her a fresh start, and said that 
I would back her to the end; she took my hand, 
and kissed it impulsively. 

“You have always been a pal to me,” she 
said; “the only real pal I have ever had.” 

“But Spencer?” I suggested. 

“Ah, Spencer,” she said. “He got some¬ 
thing back. Something worth having, too,” 
she added, her eyes lighting up with the pride 
of her own beauty. “I was one that any man 
might have been proud of in those days. But 




202 


Love Letters 


you—you have done it all for friendship’s sake. 
That’s what really counts.” 

Often since then I have remembered that 
saying of hers. There is no woman, however 
abandoned, but feels in her depths some con¬ 
tempt for the man who takes her for his own. 

The promise I so lightly made was impos¬ 
sible to keep. No man can help a woman like 
Muriel back to ordinary life. Do you remem¬ 
ber how powerless Rossetti felt looking down 
on Jenny as she slept? 

“If but a woman’s heart could see 
This woman’s heart unerringly 
For once! But this can never be.” 

Only a woman can really help a woman; 
but women will not understand. My heart 
sank, for I had not the slightest idea what to 
do for Muriel. And it was then, O most be¬ 
loved of all the world, I thought of you. There 
is nothing you do not understand. I have told 
you things about myself that I hardly dared to 
speak aloud, because your great sympathy gave 
me courage, because you always understood. 




To A Dead Woman 


203 


Rossetti wrote, “But this can never be.” But 
he wrote a generation ago, in the dark ages, be¬ 
fore the modern woman had come into the 
world. All that was thought and said before 
her coming is out of date and old, like some 
weird custom of the ancients at which we smile, 
and of which we are half-ashamed. For you 
are here, darling, and women like you, and the 
world is a new place. 

Do you remember how I told you Muriel’s 
story one evening, dining in Kettner’s under 
the little red lamp?' Almost before the tale 
was told, you said quite simply, “When she is 
ready to come out of hospital, we’ll go together 
to meet her, and I will take her on. She can 
‘maid’ me, and do things for me 3 and it will 
give her just the start she needs.” 

And so one day we went in a cab and fetched 
her away. But the new life did not last long. 
You were living by yourself then, in those 
rooms beyond Victoria. Soon after Muriel 
came to you, you went away on tour, leaving 
her alone; she had nothing to do for three 
weeks, and, of course, the inevitable happened. 
She met old friends one evening 5 your land- 




204 


Love Letters 


lady was roused at two in the morning by the 
noise she made, clinging to the area railings and 
shouting her drunken obscenities to the night. 
When you returned she was gone. 

What an old fool you must have thought 
me! I, too, was a little ashamed. I felt that 
somewhere in the back of your mind there was 
an idea that Muriel had been more to me than 
I cared to confess; some word or look of yours 
conveyed the suspicion that her child might 
have been my child too. I wonder if you 
really thought that? Dear, it was not so. She 
was just a stray soul that crossed my path in 
the way I have described; and I liked her and 
did my best for her. Every woman is some 
one’s lover, or some one’s sister, or some one’s 
mother, or some one’s child. And if only we 
men could remember that, and never act except 
with that in mind, the world would be less cruel 
for women, and our own life-story would be 
fraught with less remorse. 

After that episode, half ludicrous, half 
tragic, you never saw Muriel again. But I 
have seen her, at long intervals, and the most 
wonderful part of her tale is still to be told. 




To A Dead Woman 


20 5 


Only a few weeks ago I found a letter in her 
handwriting, signed “Muriel Hopkins.” “Yet 
one more alias” I thought as I began to read. 
But this time it was her real name. She is mar¬ 
ried, and she wrote to tell me so, and to ask me 
to go and see her. I was busy, and put it off; 
but I went on Christmas Eve. 

I found her on the second floor of an old 
house in a back street off the Caledonian Road. 
Cheap muslin curtains kept out what was left 
of the afternoon light, and it was not until she 
applied a match to the broken gas mantle that 
the pitiful yellow light enabled me to see the 
room in which she lived. A large iron bed¬ 
stead occupied nearly a quarter of it; a large 
round table filled up most of the rest. In one 
corner was a washstand with a chipped jug and 
basin; beneath the window stood the toilet 
table; and some sheets were airing on a towel 
horse in front of the fire. 

When these were removed I sat down in an 
arm-chair opposite to Muriel and scanned her 
closely. She was dressed in a black skirt and 
low-cut woollen jumper with short sleeves; her 
arms shone white in the fitful glow of the gas; 




20 6 


Love Letters 


and I could almost fancy she was wearing some 
evening dress of the old Spencer days. But her 
boots were common and coarse, and her still 
delicate hands were grimed with work; and I 
felt a momentary shock when I realized that 
I was talking, not to Muriel Renton, but to a 
working-man’s wife, in a working-class tene¬ 
ment. I wonder why I felt that. Years be¬ 
fore, sitting beside her hospital bed, I had 
pitied her, perhaps, but it had not shocked me 
in the same way. Is it class prejudice or 
merely depravity that welcomes the parasite 
and recoils from the worker? I only know 
that I am ashamed of that momentary feeling 
now, for Muriel has found herself at last, and 
is happier than she has ever been. 

“I wouldn’t change now for £20 a week,” 
was the greeting she extended to me with half- 
defiant, half-radiant eyes. “My husband earns 
£3 a week on the Midland Railway. It used to 
be nearer £4, but he’s come down this year with 
all the rest. He brings it all home, and never 
stops to spend a penny on the way. We go out 
on pay night and have a Guinness 5 and that’s 
all we ever touch—just one a week.” 




To A Dead Woman 


207 


“You look well on it,” I said. 

Her face was a little older} the hair was 
tinged with grey; but the coarseness was all 
gone, it was a plump, happy, middle-aged 
working woman whose bright eyes laughed at 
me as she drew a contrast between her present 
and her past. 

“I have to get up at half-past five in the 
morning now, and get him his breakfast; and 
I cook him a hot supper when he comes in at 
night—just a stewed steak or something of 
that sort.” 

“You’re busy, then?” 

“Oh, that’s nothing,” she protested. “But 
the floor above belongs to us, and we let it out 
to a policeman, and I have to do for him as 
well. We get 8s. 6d. for the rent, and I get 
1 Os. for looking after him. It’s my husband’s 
grandmother who is the most trouble. She’s 
a very old lady, and needs a lot of waiting on ; 
but they’re all so kind to me that I don’t mind. 
Do you know, Ronnie—I oughtn’t to call you 
‘Ronnie’ now though.” 

“Why not?” I asked. 





208 


Love Letters 


“Oh, I don’t know, it doesn’t seem right, 
things being so changed.” 

“We’re still friends,” I told her, “and I 
think you’re splendid. I always believed you 
were all right. 

“No you didn’t,” she laughed. “You thought 
I was hopeless. You told me so several times. 
But I knew I’d be all right if I really got a 
chance.” 

“You had one or two before, after all,” I 
said. 

“No, I never had. I don’t call money a 
chance, and I don’t call work a chance 5 the 
only chance for a woman like me is a strong, 
good man to take her in hand and make her 
right. You could have done it once. Do you 
remember? ” 

“When?” I asked, curiously. 

“Why, after Spencer died, when you asked 
me to come to the country with you and look 
after your cottage.” 

“You refused.” 

“Yes; I didn’t like going back to service. 
But I wanted to come. I wanted you to make 
me come. It was pride that stopped me, and 




To A Dead Woman 


209 


I hoped you wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. 
I would have given anything for you to have 
just bought my ticket and taken me away. I 
thought you would. But you didn’t—you just 
gave me up; and I cried all night when I knew 
the chance had gone.” 

I shuddered as I remembered that the only 
reason I had not insisted on her coming was 
that I was afraid of what the world might say. 
Love can save; but it must be prepared to go 
to all lengths. Had I had faith I could have 
saved her eight more years of degradation. 

“There’s my man,” she resumed, pointing to 
a photograph of her husband in uniform over 
the mantelpiece. “He’s the best man that ever 
breathed, and he’s a big man. He can put 
them up, too; he’s got a reach like a gorilla. 
Look at his shoulders!” 

She made me tea. The flickering gasjet got 
on my nerves, so we turned it out, and talked 
by the firelight. Then happened the strangest 
incident of all. She refused the cigarette I 
offered her. 

“You’ve dropped that, too?” I asked aston¬ 
ished. 




210 


Love Letters 


“Yes. He doesn’t seem to like women to 
smoke, and I wouldn’t hurt him, seeing he’s 
so good to me. I couldn’t look him in the face 
if I did anything he didn’t like.” 

At last I found the courage to ask the ques¬ 
tion that had been on my lips since I entered 
the room. 

“How much does your husband know?” 

“Everything.” 

“Really everything?” 

“Yes—except one thing.” 

“What is that?” 

“Can’t you guess?” 

“Prison?” 

“No.” Her tone was contemptuous. 

“The streets?” 

“No. I told him all that when he asked me 
to marry him.” 

“Your daughter?” 

“Don’t be silly. Why, you know, she’s been 
up to see us.” 

“What then?” 

Her reply came in a lower voice. 

“The hospital. I never told him that. I 
couldn’t. I wanted to, so much. But I simply 




To A Dead Woman 


211 


couldn’t. And now I could tell him if I hadn’t 
kept it back so long. It’s my secret, and it 
hurts. Shall I tell him after all?” 

“Better leave it alone,” I said. 

So we talked for an hour and a half, going 
back over the past, for which she seemed to 
feel neither shame nor regret. 

“I’d have been a fool not to live when it 
came my way. But I wouldn’t change now 
for £20 a week.” 

I wonder how long it will last? She has 
been married fifteen months already. It would 
almost make me believe that Spencer’s brother 
was right when he said in his worldliness, 
“Let her go back to her own kind,” as if we 
must all get into our own groove to work out 
our fate. The puzzle of life is to discover 
exactly what our groove is. Sometimes it takes 
several lives to do. Sometimes we find it with¬ 
out being sure, and leave it, as you and I left 
it, because we have no faith. Dearest, your 
groove was mine—I know it now; and if I 
had to live my life again, I would never let 
you go. 




IX 


Friday evening 

D EAREST,—The time of writing here is 
nearly over. To-morrow morning you 
will go where Enid went that day, and I shall 
return to town without you. Only a few hours 
are left in which to write the rest of our tale. 
If I were to describe in detail the incidents of 
our friendship they would take years to write, 
as they took years to live. Not once, but a 
hundred times we dined tete-a-tete at our little 
places in Soho; every fresh theatre piece we saw 
together, and heard new singers sing, new r 
players play. A hundred times we walked in 
winter frost or summer heat, ploughing swiftly 
through slush and sleet in macintoshes, or strol¬ 
ling the blazing London pavements, looking 
at the shops. And never again in all that time 
did we quarrel; not once did our friendship 
tire. We were as brother and sister, but closer 
212 


To A Dead Woman 


213 


than they ever are. We were as father and 
daughter sometimes, when you had need of 
care or counsel; or we were as mother and son, 
when I was sad or out of luck. And with 
it all we were as lovers, without the one thing 
that makes love perfect, but so often makes 
love die. 

I gave you little surprises, plans made in 
secret for you, to please you, or unexpected 
gifts of flowers or fruit before their season 
came. Once in the second summer of our 
comradeship I found a little packet in chambers 
addressed in your handwriting. I opened it 
curiously and saw a small silver paper-knife, 
with the date engraved upon it. It was not 
my birthday, nor yours, and I did not under¬ 
stand. So I telephoned to thank you, and 
asked you what it meant. 

“I knew you would not remember,” you 
said, laughing, over the ’phone. It is the an¬ 
niversary of our day on the river, of our first 
kiss. But kisses mean so little to a man.” 

And every year afterwards on that day you 
sent me something, a book or a matchbox or 
a handkerchief of silk. 




214 


Love Letters 


Except for the Great Separation we were 
never parted for more than a few days. The 
Great Separation we called it then, because it 
lasted four months and seemed an Eternity. If 
I had dreamed what was in store, if I had fore¬ 
seen the numbness of the ten long years in which 
we were hardly to meet again, I should never 
have noticed those four brief months of winter 
while you were abroad. But, happily perhaps, 
I did not know, I could not foretell 3 we lived 
always in the present, you and I, when we were 
together. 

Your health had been failing noticeably. 
One winter you coughed nearly all the time, 
and, when the warmer weather came round 
again, you did not quickly regain your lost 
strength. If we walked far, or danced long, 
you were tired; if you hurried, you were short 
of breath; even I could see that your dresses 
hung looser than of yore, and there were hol¬ 
lows in your neck and shoulders that were not 
there when we first met. 

Towards the end of that summer—soon after 
taking Muriel Renton to be your maid—you 
went on a tour in the south-west of England, 




To A Dead Woman 


215 


a series of concerts in dead-alive towns like 
Yeovil and Truro, that involved a great deal 
of travelling, and amounted, musically and 
financially, to nothing at all. When you started 
you were not really fit to go. The audiences 
were small and discouraging; your accompanist 
was bad, “a fiend” you called him ; and you 
were out of voice. You arrived back in town 
in a torrent of September rain, and took to your 
bed with a sore throat. I turned up next eve¬ 
ning and found you very ill, running a high 
temperature, with no one to look after you. 
You had returned to find Muriel flown, and 
your landlady in an unpleasant temper due to 
her behaviour. Your usual courage had mo¬ 
mentarily given way, and you held my hand 
and cried convulsively. The fever lent an 
exaggerated importance to the failure of your 
tour; you told me you had no future and your 
life had been wasted; it did not matter to your¬ 
self or any one else what became of you; and 
more in the same strain. 

I sent for a doctor, the same who had at¬ 
tended Enid, and he took a serious view; in¬ 
deed, unless you were distinctly better next day 




216 


Love Letters 


he advised you to have a nurse. Meanwhile 
he gave certain directions, drugs to be taken, 
your throat to be painted, your water-bottle to 
be kept hot all night; and on no account were 
you to get out of bed and wander about doing 
things for yourself. 

You could suggest no one likely to come 
and look after you that night; besides it was 
by this time quite late. So I stayed with you till 
morning, and shook down on the divan in your 
studio, stealing in every few hours of the night 
to take your temperature and to fulfil the 
doctor’s orders. Next day you were at least 
not worse; and I promised to come in again 
directly my work was done, and to spend the 
night again if the doctor thought a nurse un¬ 
necessary. It was such a joy to me to be near 
you in your illness; and you took me at my 
word, knowing how precious were such hours 
spent together. For three nights I tended 
you and helped you pull through. Then you 
were well enough to be left to yourself; and, 
tired with my broken rest, I went home. 

Two little incidents of that illness I recall, 
that I never told you. One was on the first 




To A Dead Woman 


217 


night, when your throat was angry, and you 
could hardly speak. I had smoothed your 
sheet and arranged your pillow; when I bent 
to kiss your cheek before I left you, you pushed 
me away with your hand, and whispered: 

“Don’t, dear. You will catch my throat.” 

And I answered jestingly, “I should love 
to. I love anything that is yours.” 

“Tres dix-huitieme,” you muttered, smiling 
faintly. 

But I never told you that I really meant it; 
that at that moment I almost hoped to fall ill 
because of nursing you. Stupid, wasn’t it? 

The other incident was on the last night. 
The fever had left you, and during the evening 
you had slept a damp, deep sleep. I walked 
across to your bed to speak to you when you 
woke; and you took my hand in both of yours 
to thank me, pressing it against your cheek. 
Something stirred in me, tempting me to creep 
in beside you, to clasp you and take you in 
that moment of dishevelled weakness, all alone 
as we were in the night. But I was there as 
a nurse and not as a lover; it would have been 




218 


Love Letters 


a coward’s trick. And yet, had I done it— 
who knows? 

You never really recovered from that break¬ 
down } and one day you told me you had seen 
a Harley Street specialist, who had advised 
you earnestly to go away to Switzerland for 
the winter, as the English climate was too damp 
for your delicate lungs. It meant the interrup¬ 
tion of your workj but your work had not been 
going well for some time past 5 you were too 
tired to practise regularly, and engagements 
had been few and far between. So you had 
decided to leave at the end of October and 
stay away till March. 

The night before you started we met rather 
late, as you were busy packing. We were both 
feeling depressed as we turned into Kettner’s, 
for the sake of old times, and ordered our 
cocktails in the little room on the left. Per¬ 
haps for that reason you suggested dining else¬ 
where, and running rapidly through the list 
of our favorite haunts we decided on the Petit 
Riche. Before we left Kettner’s however, I 
raised my glass to your recovery, and vowed 
a vow that I would never dine at Kettner’s 




To A Dead Woman 


219 


again until I dined with you. This vow I 
kept; and for nearly five months my favorite 
hostelry knew me no more. 

The cocktails cheered us not a little—they 
had a dash of absinthe—and we walked round 
the corner into Old Compton Street. Greeting 
our pretty hostess with the assurance of old 
customers, we dived underground, and secured 
a table in a recess in the narrow passage con¬ 
necting the two main rooms. Both of us were 
hiding a feeling of sickness beneath a veneer 
of artificial gaiety which deceived neither, but 
kept the evening from becoming impossibly 
sentimental. We expressed an exaggerated de¬ 
light at the sight of the little check tablecloths, 
at the peasant pottery from Brittany, at the 
plates with their quaint red and yellow figures, 
at the low ceiling and white-washed brick walls 
that reproduced the atmosphere of a cottage 
in the heart of London, albeit d la mode 
Georges Cinq. And when we were half through 
our bottle of Asti Spumante—we had had a 
dash of absinthe in our cocktails, be it remem¬ 
bered—we felt thoroughly at home with our- 




220 


Love Letters 


selves and every one else, and the world was 
rosy around us. 

It was in this vein that we got into conver¬ 
sation with our neighbours at the next table— 
two young men and a girl, all French. The 
girl and one of the men were visitors to Lon¬ 
don, newly arrived, and they were being shown 
round by the other man, who apparently lived 
here, and spoke fair English. In holiday tem¬ 
per they, too, were drinking a 'petit vin mous- 
seux y and joined their voices, though rather 
timidly, to the music of the pianist at the end 
of the room. We gave them courage, singing 
a little louder than they; until at last the pianist 
struck up a well-known French valse, and we 
all let ourselves go. 

“Lorsque tout est fini,” 

we sang, gathering strength ; and later on a 
little louder: 

“On se promet dans sa folie 
De s’adorer longtemps, longtemps.” 

Others joined, and it was quite a chorus that 
brought the verse to a close: 




To A Dead Woman 


221 


“Pourtant le cceur n’est pas gueri 
Quand tout est fini.” 

Your voice soared above the rest; and one 
diner called out, “Bravo, bravo.” Another, an 
Italian, corrected with “Brava, bravissima.” 
The Frenchmen at the next table raised their 
glasses to you 5 the colour mounted to your 
cheeks, and you looked very beautiful, not at 
all in need of a change to Switzerland. I told 
you so, and you coloured still more. 

Gradually the tables thinned, and only a few 
diners were left, over their coffees and wines. 

“Perhaps Madame would sing?” suggested 
one of the Frenchmen. 

You had a moment of confusion —omnibus 
hoc vitium est cantoribus —but the Asti enabled 
us to brush that quickly aside, and I half lifted, 
half dragged you to the piano. Then you let 
yourself go. There has been many a scene of 
Bohemian revelry in that low, long room un¬ 
derground in Old Compton Street, but never, 
I feel sure, has there been any so spon¬ 
taneous, so reussi as that evening. You were 
in wonderful voice, and sang every kind of 




222 


Love Letters 


song. Beginning with popular airs that the 
pianist knew, mostly English, you led on to a 
few better songs that you played yourself 3 a 
lullaby of Brahms, followed by a lyric of 
Reynaldo Hahn to please the Frenchman. He 
came to the piano—he was a little merry, but 
not aggressively so—and eventually you gave 
way to him, while he played French valse-songs 
of Cremieux and Nyllson Fyssher; and you 
sang these, too, for there was no' music you 
did not know in those days. 

“Car ma folie, c’est toi! 

Toute ma vie, c’est toi!” 

The French trio hummed when they did 
not know the words, and came in at the end 
with an emphatic, 

“C’est toi! C’est toi!” 

Then at the last, when nearly every one had 
gone, and the lights were half extinguished, 
when we had already paid our bill and you had 
your vestiaire , you sat down once more at the 
piano and sang, quite low, with a purity of tone 




To A Dead Woman 


223 


that was unrivalled, and quite simply, letting 
the ballad tell its own tale, the pathetic little 
song from the Noces de Jeannette , the song of 
Jeannette as she plies her needle: 

“Cours, mon aiguille, dans la laine, 

Ne te casse pas dans ma main. 

Avec deux bons baisers demain 
On nous paiera de notre peine. 

Cours, mon aiguille, dans la laine. 

Cours, mon aiguille, dans la laine.” 

As you ended there were tears in both our 
eyes. The effect of the wine had passed off; 
the artificial gaiety of the evening was at an 
end; we were at the beginning of the reaction, 
at the threshold of the Great Separation. Next 
day you went to Switzerland, and I was left 
alone. 

During that long winter I worked hard, liv¬ 
ing mainly for your letters from Davos. You 
wrote frequently; and after the first few weeks 
I knew that you were in better health and hav¬ 
ing a wonderful time. You told me you had 
learned to ski passably well, mainly under the 
tuition of a Dr. Aylett, the head of the Ski 




224 


Love Letters 


Club there. You gave me to understand that 
he had taken you under his especial protection, 
not only to teach you ski-ing, but as regards 
your health as well; and you wrote of him with 
gratitude and fondness. So much so that I 
chaffed you in my replies, and asked what man¬ 
ner of man it was that was cutting me out; 
and you described a big man with immense 
shoulders and lined features, nearly twice your 
age; a widower, but with an interest in you that 
was partly paternal, partly professional. Then 
his name occurred less frequently in your let¬ 
ters; and in the end he dropped out of them 
altogether. You wrote only of skating carnivals 
by moonlight, of trailing parties and picnic- 
lunches in the snow-bound woods, of dances 
in the hotel on Saturday nights, and tea-parties 
at the cafe on Sunday afternoons. You were 
evidently a different person altogether from the 
frail Olivia who went away. 

By a curious turn of fate a great change 
came over my life, too, during that winter. 
There is not much future at the Criminal Bar 
except along the one path that leads to the 
position of Treasury Counsel; and owing to 




To A Dead Woman 


22 5 


a series of sudden changes of personnel I woke 
up one morning to find myself on that path. 
A leading K.C. was made a Judge; a Junior 
accepted the post of London Magistrate; two 
new Treasury Counsel were appointed from 
among the younger men; and 1 moved into 
chambers with one of them, and found myself 
much busier, and in the position to look for¬ 
ward to something of the kind myself in a 
comparatively short time. My income, which 
had been negligible for the first few years at 
the Bar, trebled almost at a bound; I felt a 
sense of security and importance that had never 
been mine before. 

Doyle, whom I took with me into my new 
chambers, could not resist moralising on the 
turn of events. 

“It’s all very well for people to say it’s all 
luck at the Bar, sir,” he began one morning 
when he had finished arranging things in my 
new chambers, and had placed the last old 
book in its place on the shelves. “Of course 
there’s luck in it; but it’s luck that comes 
the way of every one sooner or later. It 
comes two or three times in a lifetime, sir; 





226 


Love Letters 


and if you’re there you can take advantage of 
it if you’re not, it goes off to some one else. 
Do you remember some years ago, sir, how 
you went off on the river with a lady when 
we had that brief of Bradley and Hampden’s? 
Well, sir, if that had gone on I make bold to 
say that we’d never have been where we are 
now. Some one else would have been taken 
into these chambers, and got all the luck, as 
they say 5 and we’d have been left high and 
dry.” 

He was brushing the cinders on the hearth 
as he spoke. For a moment he ceased sweeping 
and, broom in hand, wheeled half round on his 
knees to fix me with his little beady eyes peer¬ 
ing over the top of his spectacles. 

“Am I right, sir?” he asked, portentously 
solemn. 

“You’re always right, Doyle,” I replied, 
laughing. 

The lines gathered round the corners of 
his eyes, and he broke into his usual smile. 

“No, sir3 but it’s truth I’m telling you. I’m 
quite serious.” 

“You don’t look it,” I said. 




To A Dead Woman 


227 


He replaced the hearth broom tidily in its 
place against the marble column of the mantel¬ 
piece, and stumped out of the room, his mous¬ 
tache bristling with satisfaction. For he knew 
he had scored a point, and he knew I knew. 

At the end of the season you began to write 
of your return. I wanted to meet you at the 
station j but you told me you were coming back 
with one or two friends, that the arrangements 
were in the hands of Dr. Aylett, who was kindly 
seeing you all safely to London, and you were 
not sure what time you would arrive. Finally 
you sent a wire, which I received on a Thursday 
morning, to say you were arriving that after¬ 
noon ; but as I had a Conference which could 
not be cut at the last moment, I did not go to 
meet you, but wrote to your flat to say that I 
was coming round later to take you out to 
dinner. 

That evening I sensed things were not quite 
the same. You were tired, of course, after 
your journey; so we just went round the corner 
to a small restaurant near your place, where 
I ordered half a bottle of champagne, with 
an otherwise simple meal. We both had much 




228 


hove betters 


to tell, and there was no lack of conversation; 
but although you were obviously glad to see 
me, and kissed me at meeting and parting with 
a tenderness all your own, something inde¬ 
scribable, indefinible, had snapped between us, 
something that joined us even across the table 
at the Gourmets the night we first met, some¬ 
thing that kept me linked to you during the 
long winter evenings while you were abroad, 
when I paced the London streets like a lost 
dog, longing for you to return. 

“You are tired,” I said, as soon as the coffee 
was served. “Let me take you home at once, 
so that you can get a good long night. We 
will meet to-morrow. Come and call for me 
in chambers about seven, if you like.” 

“Noj not to-morrow,” you replied. “The 
day after.” 

“Oh, why not to-morrow? Two days is 
so long to wait.” 

“I am not free to-morrow. Dr. Aylett has 
promised to take me to the theatre. You see,” 
you continued hastily, noting my disappoint¬ 
ment, “he goes down to his place in the country 
on Saturday, and to-morrow in his only day. 




To A Dead Woman 


229 


He has been so good to me, that I couldn’t 
well refuse, could I?” 

“All right, then, Saturday. We will begin 
our wonderful life together again on Saturday.” 

And on Saturday we met 5 and on many 
succeeding Saturdays. Indeed the whole of 
that summer we led our old life, dined in 
the same little restaurants as heretofore, danced 
in the same night clubs, attended together the 
same recitals in Wigmore Street on week-days 
and the same concerts at the Queen’s Hall or 
the Albert Hall on Sundays. We went not 
once, but several times, to Skindle’s at Maiden¬ 
head or to dinner at Hampton Court; we 
strolled in the Park by sunshine and by star¬ 
light 5 we trod the pavements of the West End 
when the lights were blazing in the windows, 
and when the shops were fast shut. We read 
all the new books, and rediscovered old authors 
together, exchanging impressions, comparing 
notes all the time. But it was not the same, 
was it, dear? The Great Separation was only 
a beginning. We were heading towards the 
Parting of the Ways. 




X 


hater . 

D EAREST and Best, —The tale is almost 
told. Flora, before she went to bed, 
brought me coffee and milk, and a saucepan 
to heat them with; she piled the fire, and filled 
the scuttle anew at my request. For I knew 
I should not sleep; I am restless, excited, im¬ 
patient for the end. To-morrow looms before 
my eyes; or rather to-day, for it is i a.m. 
When I have finished this last letter, when I 
have written for you the end of the story— 
the very end, containing so much that you never 
knew—it will be morning. I shall steal out 
into the white-grey light and take once more, 
for the last time, my daily walk along the foot¬ 
path by the stile. I shall follow the tracks 
trodden in the snow of yesterday, and say my 
farewell to the cottage by the pond, beneath 
the white branches of the walnut tree. No 


230 


To A Dead Woman 


231 


smoke will issue from the crooked chimney- 
stack, the door will be tight fastened, and the 
blinds drawn across the windows, with perhaps 
the faint flicker of a candle showing through 
if the labourer is just astir. The shaggy horses 
will not be there, nor the geese, close-gathered 
into the shelter of the shed; the blacksmith’s 
fire, too, will have died down, and be cold, even 
as your body is cold. The village will sleep, 
as you sleep; only I shall be walking awake, 
with the passion in my heart recalcitrant, wait¬ 
ing to burst into a madness when they lay you 
to your rest. 

I shall not dare go there to see. Why flaunt 
my suffering before the world? I shall wait 
here in this room with these letters in my hand, 
and watch from the window. But when they 
are all gone, the gaping onlookers, the sorrow¬ 
ing servitors, the black-clad mourners who were 
once your friends; when he, too, has bent his 
great shoulders above your burying-place and 
looked with his lined face for the last time 
upon your coflinlid; when he has gone back to 
his lonely home with his children, and there 
is no one left to see—I shall slip quietly out 




232 


Love Letters 


into the churchyard with the letters I have 
written you, and post them to you there, in 
your grave. Too late, too late, O best beloved 
of all the world, have I learned the lesson that 
once long ago you would have taught me, that 
in the world there is nothing real but Love. 
And so, when the diggers have covered in with 
damp relentless clods of earth these ten small 
packets watered with my tears, and there is 
nothing, ah! less than nothing, left of what 
was you and me—I shall leave your body to its 
long, mysterious change, and go back once more 
to my chambers and to Doyle, to the life of 
briefs and guineas that I chose before you, 
fancying I was strong. . . . 

And now for the end of the story; we have 
come to the Parting of the Ways. 

It was bound to come; I had sensed it for a 
long time. But when it came, it came suddenly, 
irrevocably. We were dining by the open win¬ 
dow at Rule’s, in Maiden Lane. The long 
room was empty; the old prints of bygone 
players looked down on vacant tables, Mrs. 
Cibber and Garrick and Madame Vestris, Mac- 
ready and the Kembles, Polly Smith and Polly 




To A Dead Woman 


233 


Fitzroy and all the ghosts of Old Drury as it 
used to be when Rule’s was in its glory. But 
this century has brought its changes, and no¬ 
where more than to Rule’s. Theatre folk still 
crowd in there between rehearsals to warm their 
toes and eat and drink by the fire in the room 
behind the bar; a few connoisseurs, a very few, 
dine upstairs where we were dining that night, 
and look at the old pictures on the walls while 
they wait for fried oysters and mixed grill. 
But often that upper room is half-deserted as it 
was that evening, save for a waiter hovering 
behind the screen, or a group of diners—the 
personnel of the establishment—round a large 
table in the dimly lighted recess at the back. 
The lamps on the little tables were not alight, 
there was no need; for the twilight came in at 
the open window where we sat, looking at the 
life in the opposite houses so close that it 
seemed as if we could almost touch them, and 
leaning out to watch the people passing, few 
and far between, in the narrow lane below. 

How quiet are the byways of London in 
August! The life of the City had run down, 
after the brilliance of the season, after the 




234 


Love Letters 


bustle of the day; the pulse of London seemed 
hardly to be beating, for there is no night life 
in Maiden Lane. And over our hearts there 
hovered a presentiment of parting, calm, inevi¬ 
table. 

I was almost waiting for what you told me. 
Though it was quite unexpected I felt it had to 
be. The big events of Life are like great 
Music: the theme is new and yet inevitable. 
You cannot foretell one note until you hear it$ 
but when once you have heard it, you realise it 
could not have happened any other way. If 
you begin to hum the melody over again you 
find it unforgettable; its memory flows on and 
on, leaving no room for error, brooking no 
interruption until the close. You cannot 
change the flow of the “Preislied,” or stem the 
triumph of the motive of Redemption 5 and 
God Himself could not have altered what you 
had to say that evening, at the little table a 
deux y by the open window, above the narrow 
strip of London’s labyrinth that men call 
Maiden Lane. 

You were summoning courage to tell me all 
the early part of the mealj and our conversa- 




To A Dead Woman 


235 


tion was scrappy, leading nowhere. Suddenly 
you said, a propos of nothing that had gone 
before: 

“I have something to tell you, Ronnie. It 
has been on my mind for some time, and I am 
going to tell you to-night.” 

“Fire away,” said I in a hearty voice. I 
felt hollow inside as I spoke. 

“It’s all up,” you said. 

“What’s all up?” 

“My music, my career, everything I have 
lived for and fought for.” 

You paused. 

“Why?” I asked, to break the silence. 

“The public doesn’t want singers like me. 
It wants very big voices, no matter how hard 
they are. Or it wants pretty girls who sing 
stuff that fetches them, that ‘gets’ them, as 
Lockwood used to say. It wants cheap music 
and broad methods, and sex, sex, sex—that’s 
what it wants, not music. My voice is musical 
—why pretend? You know it’s true. When 
I hear my own notes sometimes I almost cry 
because of their richness and their purity. It’s 
no credit to me 5 God gave it me, to use for 




236 


Love Letters 


them, for them”—you waved your hand 
towards the window— a and they don’t want it, 
they don’t appreciate it 5 because I will not use 
their cheap methods. I don’t like singing bad 
music, but still less will I sing good music 
cheaply, as they want it sung. They want all 
the fortes fortissimo, and all the pianos pianis¬ 
simo 5 they want strong contrasts and violent 
changes of tone; they want the crescendos to 
be hurried instead of growing broader and more 
stately; they want the diminuendos drawled, 
getting slower as well as softer. I won’t do it. 
It’s like taking a Raphael and making a poster 
of it! I won’t do it for them; and I won’t 
do it for the agents. O God, Ronnie, the 
agents! it’s they who are to blame. They de¬ 
grade the public and make them worse instead 
of better. It isn’t really the public’s fault. 
People are uneducated, but they are willing to 
listen, and to appreciate, and the agents just 
degrade their taste, trying to make money, 
trying to create ‘stars.’ . . . 

“I found this out years ago,” you continued 
after a pause; “but I determined to go straight 
on my own way, singing beautiful music with 




To A Dead Woman 


23 7 


a beautiful voice, and as well, as beautifully as 
I knew how. I vowed I would never cringe 
to the agents or to the public ; that I would 
give of my best, for its own sake 3 and I be¬ 
lieved I should win through, I believed there 
was room even in England for music, real 
music, the words of the greatest minds of man 
sung by the rich voice of a woman in the full¬ 
ness of her youth. And I kept myself clear 
and pure in order to interpret them worthily, 
and to bring the message of beauty to the souls 
of men who work, and women who are tired 
and sad. And I should have won through, I 
know I should, only—only-” 

“Only what?” I asked. 

“My health won’t stand it. Pm finished. 
My lungs are much worse than I have told 
you, Ronnie. I can’t stay in England in the 
winter; I can’t live in London at all. I have 
got to give it all up; I have got to start afresh, 
in the country; I have got to have care and be 
looked after; I can’t go on alone. And so,” 
you looked up and said in a tone of forced in¬ 
difference, as if it were quite unimportant, 
“I’m going to get married.” 





238 


Love Letters 


“Good God, Olivia!” I exploded, not ex¬ 
pecting this end to your outburst. 

“Yes,” you continued hurriedly, “I am going 
to marry Dick Aylett. He has been a very 
good friend to me, and has brought me to see 
that it’s no use going on in London any longer. 
He is very rich 5 he always winters in Switzer¬ 
land, and he has a lovely place in the country, 
where I shall be stronger than I have been for 
years. He has three little children, mother¬ 
less. I can be a mother to them, and give them 
the mother’s love they need. And then”— 
you paused and took my hand—“Ronnie dear, 
perhaps I shall have children of my own, and 
be a real mother. Perhaps all that has hap¬ 
pened, all my failure as an artist, is merely 
pointing the way to that, to my real duty, to 
my true path in life. Perhaps Enid was right 
after all, had she only had the courage to hold 
on and see it through.” 

The waiter removed our empty plates, and 
brought us colfee. 

“A creme de menthe?” I asked you a little 
cruelly. “Rien que pour la couleur?” 

The words brought a memory, a flush into 




To A Dead Woman 


239 


your face. You looked away through the open 
window. I wanted to say something, and 
could not. 

“Have I hurt you, dear?” you asked. 

“No,” I said untruthfully. 

“Look here, Ronnie,” you continued, “we 
have got to be sensible and face facts. I never 
meant to marry, otherwise I should have mar¬ 
ried you, long ago. I was an artist first and 
last and all the time. But all that is finished, 
an old story. Pm beat. I want taking care 
of; and Dick can take care of me. I should 
be no use to you now. Your life is in London; 
and you don’t want to be saddled with an in¬ 
valid, who has to live abroad half the year. I 
shall last his time probably, with luck; but I 
should only be a drag on you. I am very, 
very fond of him; but we can still be friends, 
great friends, you and I, Ronnie, can’t we?” 

I said “Yes” mechanically, knowing that it 
would not be so. You did not know, and it 
was just as well. Had you realised that the 
step you were taking meant so complete a part- 
ing, you would never have taken it. And that, 




240 


Love Letters 


for you, would have been a pity, for what you 
did was best. 

But even before your marriage you began to 
realise that our parting was complete. Aylett 
to you was strong and tender, generous and 
sympathetic; but he was jealous of me. No 
longer young, he was afraid of my youth and 
of my long friendship j it tortured him to see 
me with you; and when you talked of me, a 
thundercloud passed across his face, and left 
it darkened, troubled. You explained this to 
me one day, saying that when you were married 
he would soon grow out of it; you would learn 
how to disarm his fear, and accustom him to our 
intercourse. Meanwhile, until the marriage, 
it was no affair of his how often we met. 

But we met less often. You were busy, and 
the time was short. The wedding came swiftly, 
for it was already fixed when you first told me 
of it; and from that moment our meetings were 
no pleasure to me, for the shadow of Aylett 
was over all. I, too, was jealous, more jealous 
perhaps then he; I searched all you said for 
evidence of his influence, for signs that he was 
more to you than I. You know, dearest, how 




To A Dead Woman 


241 


I always hated cruelty, and could never hurc 
an animal or a child. Yet if, as often happens, 
I see from some window, too far away to inter¬ 
fere, a strong man beat an overloaded horse in 
the street outside, I cannot turn my eyes away; 
I have to watch each detail of the fiendish work, 
the straining muscles, the slipping hoofs, the 
very twitch of the man’s face as he brings the 
long whip down on the sweating flanks, and 
mutters through his teeth his meaningless ob¬ 
scenities. And when the spectacle has passed 
from view, lost in the traffic of the street be¬ 
yond, I catch myself still listening at the open 
window for each fresh shriek of the pitiless 
thong, imagining the misery I can no longer 
see. Even so, darling, in those last weeks, I 
tortured my soul with the thought of Aylett, 
picturing his love for you, searching, straihing 
for the trace of it in all you said. 

Just before the end you, too, had your mo¬ 
ment of fear, I fancy; or perhaps you saw my 
pain and wanted to comfort me. At least the 
last three days you were less busy, and gave all 
your time to me. You called for me at my 
chambers, urging me to leave as early as I 




242 


Love Letters 


could; and we spent long evenings together, as 
on the week before the Great Separation. Only 
this time we had no heart to walk or explore; 
we just wandered to some seat in the Temple 
Gardens, or sat for hours over our little meal 
in Soho. For in Soho we dined the last three 
nights, for old sake’s sake, in memory of that 
first evening long ago. 

The last night of all, the night before your 
wedding, there was so much to say, but we 
could not say it. We spoke lightly of the 
future, while our thoughts were brooding on 
the past. Every street, every turning, every 
building, had its memories for us as we traced 
our steps for the last time from the Temple 
Gardens to the West End—the outline of the 
Houses of Parliament from the Embankment 
path; the mark of red orange drawn across the 
face of the fogwrapt sun before it dipped into 
the darkness of the west; the crowds scramb¬ 
ling into suburban trams beneath the railway 
arch, that we noticed before we turned north¬ 
wards into the Strand; the little narrow foot¬ 
way among the houses between there and Long 
Acre, leaving Maiden Lane—our Maiden Lane 





To A Dead Woman 


243 


—away to the right ; the burst of traffic at the 
corner of Coventry Street and Charing Cross 
Road, with the queue waiting outside the Tube 
Station on the one side, and the stream of 
loafers and street women on the other—sorry 
types both, of the world that works, and the 
world that plays 5 the ragged children shout¬ 
ing in the cobbled space behind the Shaftes¬ 
bury Theatre, the only spot now left that re¬ 
calls the atmosphere of Seven Dials ; the quick 
dive across Shaftesbury Avenue to avoid the 
stream of diners and theatre-goers in their cars 
and cabs 3 the quiet welcome of Church Street, 
mean and yet clean, its last-century houses still 
part of modern London, like an old-time dress 
made new; and, finally, the cheery light of the 
corridor of Kettneris, the newspaper cuttings in 
their frames upon the wall, the parlour where 
we drank our cocktails, and the little table with 
the red lamp where we sat and dined for the 
last time. I do not remember of what we 
spoke; I only know we dared not say the things 
that were in our hearts; I only know the tears 
that welled, not once, nor twice, into your dear, 
sad eyes. 




244 


Love Letters 


And the same ringing sadness was in your 
voice too, when, later, in the studio you sang 
to me at your piano for the last time. Your 
trunks, fastened and labelled, lay in the corner 
by the door5 the photographs and small orna¬ 
ments had been removed, and your music was 
all packed away; but you wanted to sing to me 
your Ave Maria before I said good-bye. You 
laid your gloves on the piano; you lifted the 
cover of the keyboard j and seated there in your 
hat, and with the veil drawn back from your 
face, you sang in the empty studio with that in¬ 
comparable voice of yours, simply, sadly, richly, 
the plaintive music that I loved so well. 

“Do you know who wrote that?” you asked 
when you had done. 

“You always said it was a friend.” Then 
an idea flashed through me suddenly. “You 
wrote it yourself. Did you?” 

You laughed and shook your head. 

“No. It was my friend, my oldest friend, 
the only friend I ever had until I met you— 
my father. It was the offertory piece in his 
Mass.” 

You closed the piano—I can hear the sound 




To A Dead Woman 


245 


now; it was the knell of our long comradeship. 
I was standing just as I had entered, with my 
hat and stick in my hand. You rose to kiss me 
good-bye. And it was then, holding your body 
close to mine, your eyes looking up into my 
face, that you made me the promise that you 
kept on Monday, ten long years afterwards. 
I told you that I believed you were doing the 
right thing; and with my reason I did believe 
it, though with my heart I still longed for a 
miracle to intervene. 

“But, dear, we can never be sure. Strange 
things happen in a long life, and it may be that 
one day you will need me again. If ever you 
are not happy, if ever you are in doubt or dif¬ 
ficulty, if ever you are ill and facing death, 
then send for me, and I will come. Wherever 
you or I may be, whatever distance separates 
us, or whatever ties of duty keep us apart, when 
you send for me I will come. From the ends 
of the world I will come; next week, next year, 
or when we both are old, it will be all the same. 
Only promise to call me. Promise.” 

You promised. Ten years later you sent; I 




246 


Love Letters 


found the telegram on my table last Monday 
evening. 

“Please come at once.— Olivia.” 

And I came. 

All the journey here in the taxi, in the train, 
in the old village cab that brought me to your 
door, I wondered what might be the meaning 
of your message. I imagined all that the fu¬ 
ture might hold in store. Perchance you were 
unhappy, and after months or years of struggle 
you wanted me to help you, to take you away. 
Perchance he was dead, and you were free to 
come to me, to begin our life again as it used 
to be, but closer, closer, sealed with the mar¬ 
riage of the flesh. And I would tell you of all 
I had suflFered when you went away, of the hun¬ 
ger of my body in the long, sleepless nights, 
thinking of you, dreaming of you, weeping for 
you. I would learn from your lips either that 
you had not suspected I had cared so much, or 
that you had known it all the time and suffered 
with me, though so far away. 

Once, dearest, only once I wrote and told 




To A Dead Woman 


247 


you. It was three weeks after your marriage. 
I had held on till then, but suddenly I had 
broken down. Too ill to go to chambers, I had 
spent two days in bed, all alone in the dark¬ 
ened room, eating nothing, rolling from side 
to side, and biting the pillow in my misery, 
abject, tortured, a worm and no man. And 
suddenly I had dressed and gone out into the 
street again. The light and the traffic seemed 
to cheer me, my step grew stronger, and the 
pavement was solid beneath my feet. Ashamed 
of my two days’ beard, I turned into a barber’s 
and demanded a shave in a clear voice—the 
first words I had spoken aloud for two days; 
then lying back in the chair, the napkin round 
my chin, the lather on my skin, a feeling of 
hollow gnawing seized me, and I felt the tears 
rushing down my cheeks. I was alone, alone, 
utterly alone in the world. Men and women 
all had their duties and their lives; the barber 
himself was busy with his task, and briskly plied 
his brush and sponge; only I was left without 
you, without you. And still weeping, I walked 
into my club and wrote you a coward’s letter, 
the one letter I regret, the one thing in all our 




24B 


Love Letters 


long love of which I am ashamed. You never 
answered it, or only lightly; but I pictured to 
myself on the journey that I would tell you 
all about it now, and you would kiss me after 
all these years and say you understood. 

Three times only had I seen you since your 
marriage, and it was never the real “you.” The 
first time was on your return from the honey¬ 
moon, when you and your husband lunched 
with me at the club. I was all a-tremor wait¬ 
ing for you to come; pretending to read a 
paper, with my attention fixed on the door of 
the club-room, turning my head that way each 
time it opened to let some one in. You entered 
at last, dressed in a costume I did not recognise, 
part of your trousseau, of course. Radiantly 
well you looked, and I congratulated you on 
your appearance and your husband on his care 
of you. Nevertheless your health and your 
new costume gave me a shock; they belonged 
to him and not to me; I hated him in my heart, 
while I smiled in his face. After that I did 
not seek to see you. You understood, and kept 
away for years. 

The second time was when you brought your 




To A Dead Woman 


249 


eldest boy up to London to see the doctor. 
Aylett had a chill at the last moment, and you 
asked me to come and meet you at lunch. But 
you had the nursery governess with you and 
talked of the children all the time, especially 
of the boy whose lungs, like your own, gave 
you anxiety. None the less I took occasion to 
arrange a pantomime party at Christmas for 
you and the children. You all came up one 
Saturday afternoon, and that was the last time 
I saw you until last Tuesday. We had rather 
a rush to catch your train back after the long 
show was over; but I found an opportunity of 
speaking to you as we paced the platform wait¬ 
ing for the train to start. 

“You are happy, dear?” I asked. 

“Very,” you said. “Dick is so good to me. 
And I love him like a father,” you added, 
laughing, determined not to be serious. 

“Well, I am glad. But you won’t forget 
your promise, anyway, will you?” I always was 
a sentimentalist. 

“No, dear; I will remember.” 

You pressed my hand good-bye, as you 
turned into the train. 




25 o 


hove betters 


“First-class carriage these days,” I said, 
laughing. 

“Well, with the children-” 

And my last view of you was leaning back 
in the cushions with an illustrated paper on your 
lap, your neck and shoulders covered with rich 
furs. One of the children began climbing on 
the seat to look at the photograph fixed on the 
wall under the rack. 

“Don’t, dear; don’t. Sit still,” you said a 
little irritably. 

And those were the last words I ever heard 
you say. 

When I next saw you, last Tuesday morn¬ 
ing, you did not speak; but it was the real you 
that lay there, the you that I used to know. I 
felt it directly I entered the room. Your hus¬ 
band had not expected me to come up so early; 
he had probably forgotten my existence in his 
anxiety. But the nurse in white uniform came 
down to the hall where I was waiting and 
fetched me in. 

“She’s quite unconscious now, sir; she can’t 
last long. But there’s no harm your just hav- 





To A Dead Woman 


251 


ing a look at her. Dr. Aylett sent me down to 
tell you.” 

A folding screen hid your face from me as 
I entered the door, so I moved noiselessly to 
the foot of the bed, beside a little table cov¬ 
ered with bottles and a bowl. Your husband 
was on the other side, sitting by your pillow, 
his back to the window, watching you. You 
lay on your back, your head turned half-left— 
my way 5 and in a flash I saw you as you were 
that first Sunday afternoon by the firelight in 
your flat, lying back in the big chair, the rich 
dark hair curving off your strong forehead, 
your full lips parted a little, sensitive and pas¬ 
sionless. Yes, it was the old you; you had 
called me and I had come; it was just as if you 
had never gone away. 

I did not know how long I stood there, two 
minutes, perhaps twenty, when I felt a touch 
on my arm. 

“We had better leave them.” 

It was the nurse who whispered, and began 
moving towards the door. 

Why should I leave you with him? You 




2 52 


Love Letters 


belonged to me. So I waited; and the nurse, 
too, paced between me and the door. 

Presently you moved—not you, but your 
face, your lips, your nostrils. Then your eyes 
opened slowly ; they were turned towards me. 
I felt the nurse slip back 5 she stood near you, 
waiting. I, too, was waiting, waiting for a 
smile, a gleam of recognition in your dream- 
lit eyes. Would you know me? Could you 
see me? I remembered that if a man is still, 
the birds do not notice him; directly he moves, 
they see and fly away. I moved noiselessly, 
one foot to the right. Your eyes followed. 
And suddenly you shook yourself and raised 
your head from the pillow, your hands out¬ 
stretched towards me, with a smile of triumph 
on your face, the smile of you when you made 
music, when you sang, when you were yourself. 

For a brief second you trembled there, half 
raised; the nurse bent forward; your husband’s 
hands shot out behind you; there was a gasp, 
and you fell back into his arms. 

Directly I knew it was all over I went from 
the room and from the house. Your body died 




To A Dead Woman 


253 


in his, but it was for me you smiled; you, the 
real you, were mine, as you have always been, 
as you will always be. 


THE END 




I 




.♦ 

































































